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Vail Daily letter: Book earlier

Regarding Mr. Steven Field’s comments regarding airfares for Vail travelers (Letters to the Editor, Thursday’s Vail Daily), a little advanced planning can go a long way. As a veteran of American Airlines, I feel qualified to teach Airline Travel 101. It’s no secret that the sooner you want to fly, the more it will cost. Is that fair, you wonder? Well, yes it is. The airplane seat is a product, a very expensive product. Any airline executive worth his salt will fill as many of those seats as he can, and that is a science that successful airlines have mastered. There is no way to put a price on that seat. You have to look at the huge stores of spare parts costing billions of dollars, untold fortunes invested in training devices and instructors, let alone paying for that aircraft — this is just a part of the expense list. So when that seat becomes available for sale it is typically a bargain to get folks to start buying. The families planning a vacation with the kids, the retired couple with vacation plans, that usually is the way it goes. If the airline sold all the seats at that price, up to departure time, they would probably lose money on that trip. Not a good idea with those kind of expenses.

So the late arrival guys get stuck with the increased fare. Not what you would like, but traveling business guys are pretty used to it — a cost of doing business, if you will. End result is the airline makes enough money to improve and provide the most modern, efficient airplane for the passenger they can.

Examples for your consideration:



Aug. 2:

• Round trip DFW to EGE: $709; rent car for week at EGE: $192

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• Round trip DFW to DEN: $589; rent car for week at DEN: $518

Aug 24:

• Round trip DFW to EGE: $444; rent car for week at EGE: $192

• Round trip DFW to DEN: $314; rent car for week at DEN: $518

Do the math!

Book earlier and save a bunch and you might fly into EGE and still be ahead.

Robert Ponti

Dallas


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