Quote:
Originally Posted by mwmac
Sean, you are correct that reducing team travel costs was one of the stated objectives of the championsplit decision.
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While that may be a stated objective the fact is that the amount of time between purchasing the tickets and their travel date has a much bigger influence than the distance traveled when air fare is involved. The popularity, number of flights and carriers serving a particular air port also has a greater influence on the cost than distance in most cases.
For example I did a quick look at costs to travel to Portland OR and Los Angeles CA from Seattle.
Seattle to LAX is showing as "from $205" while the driving distance is noted as just over 1100 miles.
Seattle to Portland is showing a "from $211" and it's driving distance is showing as 166 miles.
Both are based on traveling Oct 14th-18th.
Adjusting the dates for Portland to leave on Thur bumps that price up to $381. No certainly you can find flights to LA that are more expensive than to Portland if you play with dates and carriers to find the flight that is almost booked for Portland and a flight that is still relatively empty for LA on the same day but in general this does represent the fact that distance is a minor part of the cost of travel by air and other factors have more influence on price.