Why airfare from SFO via Denver to Costa Rica is 50% cheaper then same day Denver to Costa Rica flight?
December 16th, 2009 | 
Author: When I look up the airfare to fly from San Francisco to Costa Rica on Jan 24, 2010, I find $297 with stop-over in Denver.
But when I look up the price from Denver to Costa Rica on the same day, I can only get $453.
Does such difference make any sense to anybody?
Only one segment in 50% more expensive, then the longer flight with connections, containing it.
How the airfares are calculated?
Because a DEN-SJO flight is viewed as a different product than a SFO-DEN-SJO flight, and products are generally priced at the maximum the airline thinks the public will pay for them.
Perhaps some other airline offers nonstop SFO-SJO, so not very many people would want to go via Denver when they don’t have to. The decrease in demand for that routing would lead to a decrease in price.
On the other hand, lots of airlines offer DEN-somewhere-SJO. The fact that the DEN-SJO flight you mention is nonstop makes it more desirable than those, so naturally the price will be higher.
In other words, it doesn’t really have to do with the cost of providing the service…except that if the price people are willing to pay is less than the price it costs the airline to provide the service, then the airline will pull out of the market.
A lot of people get around this buy driving down to Colo. Springs and flight COS-DEN-wherever they want to go. Likewise, when an ORD-somewhere nonstop flight is expensive, some people drive up to Milwaukee and fly MKE-ORD-somewhere to save money.
I agree it’s kind of stupid…it would be a lot simpler if they just charged us all $0.12/mile.
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