Media quote of the day:
“I tell you what, folks. This really sucks!”
KHON weekend sports anchor, John Veneri, after a series of video glitches disrupted several sports stories during Saturday’s 6 p.m. news.
We’ve been thinking about taking off for a week this summer, and ran into an interesting fare oddity. The question is how this kind of thing impacts Hawaii travel.
Here’s the thing. We discovered that to fly to San Francisco during the period we are aiming for would cost $802 per person. So we decided to check out Portland fares. Of course, United has no direct flight. To get to Portland, you take the same $802 flight to San Francisco and then catch a connecting flight, and somehow even with the additional flight it costs a total of only $463 per person. What? The HNL-SFO legs are exactly the same, only the Portland extension is different. Not only does the extra flight up to Portland not cost more, they’re essentially giving us back $339 to continue on to Oregon. How can that possibly make any economic sense?
It certainly impacted our travel planning and if it applies to trips originating on the mainland, it must impact Hawaii vacation travel. What’s up with this?
So UH is stuck with an incomplete dance card for the coming football season, and the weak schedule will certainly undermine the attempt to boost QB Colt Brennan’s national exposure. It would be interesting to see an in-depth investigative report on what went wrong, since this is a not a short-term failure but something that has to have been festering for several years. It’s a state university, and there must be a lot of documents to be found. By the way, did the legislative get at any of those records during the recent joint House-Senate inquiry?
Here’s a bit of Kaaawa in a photo taken during our walk yesterday morning. All those sunrise colors that we see during other times of the year are gone by the time we make it to the water these days. It’s just too hard to beat that summer sun, which rises well before 6 a.m. So we just have to put up with scenes like this. Poor us.
Re: airfare.
For one thing, connecting flights are often cheaper than nonstops. http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/grossman/2005-02-25-grossman_x.htm
Add to that the fact that “lesser” destinations sometimes get a subsidy to ensure air service to an area. And the fact that, well, San Fran is a bit more popular than Portland.
Football schedule: The fact that Hawaii is playing two D-IAA teams is no surprise. For whatever reason, a lot of college teams are playing I-AA teams (Wisconsin, for example, is playing The Citadel). As was noted in the story, having a weak team on your schedule can give you a slightly better look in the polls and a better chance of going undefeated and getting a more lucrative bowl.
Online fare watchers like Travelocity will monitor certain flights you set up, and alert you if the fares drop below a limit you set. We’re flying to San Fran and back for $288.
John Veneri’s bad day on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOJEonRqnI