Save and Conquer

My wife and son just got back from a trip to Seattle to visit relatives over the Memorial Day Weekend. My wife bought the tickets in February, so they were relatively cheap at $202 round trip each person, including tax and fees. I just checked the airline they used, Virign America, and tickets from SFO to SEA are still advertised at $99 each way. With the rising cost of jet fuel, this seems like a bargain. If you were to drive in a car that gets 30 mpg, the cost using $4 per gallon comes in at $215 round trip. There is also wear and tear cost on the car that I have not included. The $215 would obviously be total fuel cost for as many people as can fit in the car, but the round-trip time has to be accounted for. It takes 2 hours each way in an airplane. It takes 13 hours each way in a car.

I just checked Greyhound bus line and they charge $184 round trip per person, non-refundable. Travel time is approximately 22 hours each way. I rode Greyhound halfway across the country back in 1977 because it was much cheaper than the airlines. Now it appears it is not so much. (There are “deals” you can get on select routes, so they may still be worth a look. Same goes fro trains.)

Even with rising fuel costs, unless you can spend time taking in the sights, it seems that travel by air is the way to go if you are traveling more than 400 miles.

As an aside, I just went onto orbitz.com and entered similar dates only 2 weeks from now and found that Alaska and United will give a round trip cost of $199 including tax and fees. I checked 4 weeks out and the cheapest was United with $225. Eight weeks out was the same. In fact, for all the rest of this year, the best price is $199 for round trip two weeks from now. What does that say about what the airlines think about the future cost of fuel?

Stumble it!