This is called "yield management" aka "screw your best customers as much as
you can".

After a decade of refining this to an art form, the **** is about to hit the
fan for the major airlines. The screwees have a memory, and they are
flocking to Southwest, Jet Blue, Sun Country, et al in droves, and they
aren't coming back.

So far, only Delta has had the brains and courage to realize that they need
to get real or die. Whether or not this revelation came in time to keep
them alive remains to be seen.

Mike Schumann

"Scott en Aztlán" wrote in message
...
Why the hell should it cost LESS for a ROUND-TRIP ticket between a
given pair of cities than it does for a ONE-WAY ticket between those
same two cities?

SNA to ERI, flying tomorrow, returning Feb 8: $635 on NWA.
SNA to ERI, flying tomorrow: One-way fare is $830.60. SAME planes,
SAME flight numbers, SAME everything as the outgoing portion of the
round trip, but instead of costing less as it should, it costs MORE. I
might as well just buy the round trip ticket and throw half of it
away...

Call me naive, just makes no sense at all to me.

--
Friends don't let friends shop at Best Buy (except to buy loss leaders for
resale on eBay).
(See http://tinyurl.com/6efhd)