Just be glad you’re not flying from Gulfport, Miss., to Tampa, Fla. The average one-way fare between those two cities was $168 during the first quarter of this year, a $119 leap — that’s 243 percent — over the $49 average one-way fare on that route during the first quarter of 1998.
Those figures make the 35 percent fare increase between Chicago and Denver seem downright modest. During the first quarter of 1998, the average one-way fare between Chicago and Denver was $143, but increased by $50 to the 1999 first-quarter average of $193, as we reported in the Nov. 21 Fare Check column.
These numbers are from the mind-numbing ledger columns of the Department of Transportation’s First Quarter 1999 Passenger and Fare Information report. But the comparisons they prompt needn’t put you to sleep. Let’s look at Gulfport-Tampa and Chicago-Denver, again.
In the first quarter of 1998, 13,500 passengers flew between Gulfport and Tampa; for the first quarter of 1999, the number plummeted to 630. On the Chicago-Denver route, 225,720 passengers flew during the first quarter of 1998; for the first quarter of 1999, that ebbed to 204,390.
Some fares decreased. For example, the average one-way fare between Chicago and Manchester, N.H., dropped from $305 for first quarter 1998 to $156 for first quarter 1999. And the passenger load vaulted from 9,630 for first quarter 1998 to 33,210 for first quarter 1999.
It’s tempting to assume that fare increases alone drove passengers from the Gulfport-Tampa and Chicago-Denver routes, and that fare decreases alone attracted them to the Chicago-Manchester route. However, the DOT report doesn’t draw that — or any — conclusion. It simply offers the information “raw,” and consumers are left to digest it however they will.
