Southwest Announces Fares and Schedule for Minneapolis/St. Paul

Southwest Airlines recently announced its schedule and fares for its service between Minneapolsi/St. Paul and Chicago Midway. The first flight will take off on March 8th, 2009. The announcement of fares is bound to create a bit of buzz for Southwest in the Twin Cities. Here’s why: The current price of a one-way airfare between MSP and Chicago is $426. Southwest’s lowest price will be $69 one-way (21 day advanced purchase required). The best round trip deal from the airlines that currently fly the route (Northwest/Delta and American) is well over $300. The math reveals that Northwest and others have some soul searching and price cutting to do in order to stay competitive on the route.

And, since Southwest also announced 8 daily flights, it appears that there will be plenty of seat avialible for those who want to give the proverbial finger to the big boys and save some cash in the process. When service launches, Southwest will only be flying the one route between MSP and Midway. However, from Midway, Southwest flies to 47 cities nationwide.

[Thanks Rick Seaney]

Southwest Rescues Twin Cities from Northwest Monopoly

The Twin Cities have enjoyed fleeting affairs with budget airlines in the past. AirTran provided dirt cheap flights between MSP and Chicago (as low as $59 one-way) for several years. When they left, fares rose considerably. For many people flying out of Minnesota, Northwest is the only game in town. A search on the major booking web sites last week turned up fares of over $500 between MSP and O’Hare. In short, Northwest has travelers trapped in a corner and seems intent on extracting as much money. Sporadic service by budget carriers like Sun Country has done little to alter the trend of high prices. But a deal between Twin Cities Int’l and Southwest Airlines will bring some significant change to the air travel market next year.

Minneapolis has been courting Southwest for some time now. The flirtation got hot and heavy earlier this year, but it took until now to iron out the details. The deal will make Minneapolis the envy of mid-sized markets across the US currently held hostage by a single major carrier.

What exactly is Southwest going to bring?Southwest will bring competition that will completely change the air travel game in the northern Midwest. Southwest is known for its cheap fares and frequent special offers. In order to compete, Northwest and others will have to drop fares. The first Southwest flights from MSP will be to Chicago-Midway (8 per day). From Midway, the airline flies non-stop to 47 cities. Perhaps the plane change will not be a turn on for convenience freaks. But for budget travel aficionados, deals like $59 from Chicago to Detroit and $127 to Vegas are hard to pass up, especially when similar routes now cost three or four times that. In addition, Southwest does not charge for extra checked baggage like Northwest currently does.

Minnesotans will have to wait until next spring for the first Southwest jet to take off. Flights will depart from the MSP’s Humphrey Terminal, a smaller terminal located behind the airport’s main Lindbergh terminal. But, it will be worth the wait for many. As Tom Parsons, owner of bestfares.com, recently told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Southwest saw high prices…they could come in and drop your prices like a rock.”

Fall fares on the way!

Ah, the summer of oil is almost behind us. Looking at the fare charts right now, either there is a giant fare war going on or fall fares are starting to get loaded into the system. Either way, there are some pretty fantabulous fares on the market right now (take that, airline analysts!)

Much of the fare sales seem to be centered around Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, for some reason. So do you have a few minutes to take a look and see what’s out there? Good, here’s the easiest way to do it.

  • Farecompare has a neat little tool that I’ve talked about before that lets you sort fares by Price and Price Per Mile (PPM). Go to this link, plug in your city, select “North America” and click Find Fares. .
  • Sort those fares by either Price or PPM (a good metric in finding good prices for long flights), then scan down the list for city pairs that you like. Departing from Detroit, the second city I found was Los Angeles, for about 200$. Sounds good.
  • Farecompare’s availbility tool is kind of janky, so next, go to Travelocity, plug in the city pairs that you saw earlier and select “Flexible Search”.
  • The results should bring up something near the price that you found earlier. Click that link and Travelocity will bring up a dynamic calendar that shows you what dates are available.

Not finding the dates you want? Yeah, that’s the problem with the cheapest fares — often times they depart on Wednesdays or Tuesdays. But if you’ve got the time to plan far enough ahead or a few extra dollars you can work around most of these setbacks.

Happy travels!

$200 from Los Angeles – Guatemala City. Got any Plans this Weekend?

There appears to be some squabbling for the Los AngelesGuatemala City (LAX-GUA) route today. Spirit, American Airlines, Taca and Mexicana all have been showing excellent fares between LA and the Latin capital, and I’m currently seeing a price of about 200$ on Taca starting this weekend through Q1 2008.

Usually, fares departing on such short notice are hard to come by. So if any of you left-coasters are free this weekend, surprise your significant other or mother with a trip down to Guatemala.

Don’t even think about telling me that you think Guatemala is dangerous. I was there in March and got there and back just fine, even with a white girl in tow.

If you want to be super safe, the trick is to leave Guatemala City as soon as you touch down and head straight for Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala. Here you’ll find an historic Central American village high in the mountains surrounded by volcanoes. Head out to see La Merced Church or stick around for a few weeks to attend spanish school.

There are a variety of activities in this safe, colonial town that will keep you busy for a long relaxing weekend without breaking the bank. And to put the safety issue in perspective, I ran into a guy from my home town, Ann Arbor as I was walking down the street one day; tourism is fairly common in Antigua.

If you get bored, you can pay a few pesos for a trip to Lake Atitlan or the top of one of the local volcanoes. I would recommend a tour in that case though, because things can get a little dicey outside of the Antigua bubble.

Use a flexible search engine such as Kayak to locate the best itineraries for your window. And as always, fare sales can disappear in the blink of an eye. If there’s any question, book now and ask questions later.

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Top Five Foreign Travel Search Engines to Fuel Your Budget Travel

With the tanking dollar and rising fuel costs, it’s getting harder and harder to find cheap fares out of the US these days. But not all markets are created equal. Airlines and travel agents base their prices on supply and demand; if they decide to cater to a particular country or region, often times the prices from that area will reflect it. As the New York Times recently reported, it can therefore be useful to try querying an off-shore search engine in addition to your favorite domestic website.

I’ve been doing this for a few years with mixed luck. What I’ve found is that with a little bit of patience and clever planning, one can frequently find competitive fares by searching on foreign sites. The difficulty is in finding the best engine and method suiting your needs; not all sites accept US-based credit cards nor are they in English. Occasionally, you’ll also have to deal with paper tickets and will need to find a foreign address to send them to. But these are small hurdles on your quest to dirt-cheap fares. A little research and patience and you’ll be well on your way to secret low-cost tickets from abroad.

Luckily, you have me to give you a head start. I’ve compiled a list of my top five favorite tools for finding good deals from foreign sites. Don’t forget to convert your currency!

1. zuji.com
As I reported earlier this week on Gadling, Zuji is a powerful tool built off the Travelocity engine, with the added benefit of broad flex searches. I’ve booked several mainland China flights through Zuji with no problem — just watch out for their added taxes at the end.

2. kayak.co.uk
The British analog of kayak.com, kayak.co.uk (or kayak.fr or de.kayak.com) provides a similar fare search from a European perspective. As the NYT article mentioned, Paris-Nice flights researched on kayak.fr were generally cheaper than those found domestically.

3. opodo.co.uk
There is a faint stench of Oribtz on the Opodo website, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of the operation, you can’t go wrong with the solid architecture on the site. I subscribe to the weekly fare deals coming from Opodo, and occasionally they come up with some competitive prices.

4.travelprice.be
Travelprice only comes in two flavors, French and Dutch, but that just adds to the authenticity of the site. Pawing around the reservations page you’ll find a lot of the same options as in any other search engine (airport codes are always the same) and you should be able to find your itinerary after tinkering around for a few minutes.

5. flylc.com
If you’re traveling solely in Europe its also always handy to check the low cost carriers to see if any of them serve your route; most of their itineraries don’t show up on legacy travel search engines. Flylc has a comprehensive list of city pairs and the airlines that serve them, just click your departure and destination and you’ll see what carriers are available. I always cross reference flylc flights to the legacy carrier itineraries to see if there is a huge fare difference.