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Indy

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 08:23:25 pm

Indy
Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

I am flying down to Orlando in February to visit my kids. I have been attempting to book a ticket but have been running into problems with pricing, flight schedules, and equipment choices. At about 6'4" I really have to avoid planes with a 30" pitch. So that eliminates the DC9-50. It also makes the CRJ-200 a bad choice.

As part of this travel I needed an early departure out of IND and the ability to get a later departure out of Orlando on the return trip. I want to get there as early as possible on my first day and have a good part of that day, plus the entire second day to spend with the kids. The later the return trip on the third day the better. Any time I get to spend there on the last day is a bonus.

The problem I was having is that the tickets with a good price either left Indianapolis late and didn't get me to Orlando until around 10pm or they had me on flights where seat pitch would be a problem. The best combination of flight times and equipment got me out of the super cheap ticket bracket and moved me into the more expensive coach seats. The super cheap ticket was about $250 round trip. The flights that got me the better times brought the ticket price up to around $450. But even with that I was facing some pretty poor equipment choices. Seat selections were an issue despite having elite status with Delta.

I looked around at other airlines and I was running into pricing problems or equipment problems everywhere. I'd love to try Frontier again but because of their scheduling I cannot get a flight from IND to MCO through MKE. Feeling a bit frustrated I started exploring the possibility of booking an F seat to MCO and a coach seat back. I plugged in the one way route to MCO and was shocked by the price that was returned. I could get the flight time I wanted and get an F seat for $350 one way. So I checked the return trip. Same thing. I could get the times I wanted and the F seat for $350. Well how did this compare to a round trip? I plugged IND/MCO into Delta.com and selected the First/Business option and the flight was priced at $995.

In all the years I've been flying I don't think I've ever come up with something where two 1-way tickets on an airline was nearly 30% less than a round trip ticket on the very same airline. It is possible that First/Business in the U.S. is priced like that often with Delta. I have no idea. Maybe there is a sale on one way tickets. Maybe it is because I have booked over 30 days out. I think paying an additional $250 round trip for the same flight times is worth it when you get more miles because now you can fly IND-DTW-MCO instead of IND-ATL-MCO plus you get the F bonus as well. The DTW-MCO and MCO-DTW flights are on the 753 with full meal service as well. Should be a good experience.

Hopefully this will server as a good bit of information the next time you are looking to book a domestic ticket and are running into scheduling problems and a decent domestic ticket is pushing $450-500. Check 1-way first/business prices. You may be surprised.

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FedEx

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 03:56:17 pm


Member

Joined: 11 Feb 2012
Posts: 165
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Indy,

I did not think that airline tickets to Orlando on Delta were that expensive.

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