With airfares hitting historic lows, it’s time to buy tickets

It’s a great time for bargain-hunting travelers. Coast-to-coast round-trip flights can be found for less than $250. Round trips between some Midwestern cities and the coasts are under $120.

Financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn hails “the cheapest air ticket this country has seen in years.”

That scene and that quote are from April 1987.

It’s been 16 years since domestic airfares have been as low as they’ve been this year, the Air Transport Assn. trade group recently reported. When you factor in inflation, fares may actually average 60% less than in ’87.

Northwest Airlines recently advertised a $119 one-way sale fare, or $238 round trip, between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. -- the same sale fare that major airlines announced in April 1987, according to a Washington Post article at the time.

To provide some perspective: In April 1987 the national median home price was $86,000 (compared with $158,300 in 2002), and the average U.S. price for self-serve unleaded gasoline was 91.4 cents per gallon during the Easter holiday. (It was nearly $1.58 nationally last week.)

How can the big airlines make money at these prices? They can’t, experts say. And with early signs that Americans are taking to the skies again, after the Iraq war simmered down and the U.S. lowered its domestic alert level, seats are starting to fill and the bargains may fade.

That’s why industry insiders are booking their own summer travel now instead of holding out for lower prices. They suggest you do the same.

Terri Shank, spokeswoman for the Internet travel seller www.orbitz.com, bought a $191 Chicago-Denver round trip on American Airlines for Labor Day weekend on April 16, a day after Northwest touched off a summer airfare war. That beat a $236 low price the previous weekend and $211 in an earlier sale, she said.

Amy Ziff, columnist for www.travelocity.com, recently called her parents and urged them to book their London flight after British Airways posted a sale.

Northwest last week extended its sale on summer fares. You can book through Friday for travel in the U.S. through Sept. 9, to Asia through June 30 and to Europe through Oct. 11. Other airlines may have matched the sale by the time you read this.

“There’s not much room for the fares to go down,” said Geoff Silvers, Orbitz director of marketing. “There’s room for them to go up a bit.”

Here’s a closer look at why fares have been so low:

* Too many seats: The troubled U.S. economy was already discouraging travel by early 2001. Since then, the airline industry has endured the Sept. 11 attacks, travel paralysis in the months before and during the Iraq conflict and the SARS outbreak.

Flights have been cut, big planes mothballed and smaller planes substituted. But there are still too many seats, so fares are being reduced to fill them, said Jon Ash, managing director of Global Aviation Consultants in Washington, D.C.

* Cut-price competition: The rapid growth of discount airlines such as Southwest and JetBlue has dramatically altered the industry. Several years ago, the majors faced competition from discounters on half or fewer of their routes, by some estimates. By last fall, they felt the heat on nearly two-thirds of 85 high-traffic routes that Ash’s company surveyed.

As discounters expand their networks across the nation, fare sales spread. Major airlines must match the deals to compete.

Here’s why fares may not stay this low much longer -- barring, of course, a terrorist incident or other crisis:

* Pent-up demand: Many Americans have postponed their travel plans in the wake of national turmoil. It’s too early to tell if we’re ready to leave home en masse again, but some signs point in that direction.

The day after Northwest announced its April 15 fare sale, Orbitz had one of its highest-volume sales days since the site made its debut in June 2000, Silvers said. In the week ending April 13, after the Iraq war abated, the discount travel site www.hotwire.com logged its largest gross bookings since August, said spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky.

* New pricing strategies: Or rather, a return to old ones.

Last-minute sales by airlines, cut-rate weekend Web fares on the Internet, uncertainty about their finances or the future -- all these trends have made Americans book vacations later.

“I think the airlines realized they made a mistake in encouraging people to think this way,” Hotwire’s Bohutinsky said.

After a spate of short-term sales, major airlines this month began offering discounts good through August or even into October.

This may mark a return to their traditional strategy of filling some seats early with low fares, then raising prices as the flight date nears and seats get scarce, some experts said. But others, such as Ron Kuhlmann, vice president of Unisys R2A Transportation Management Consultants in Hayward, Calif., doubt that the majors can make that approach work, given the cheap last-minute tickets available from discounters.

Here are ways to increase your chances of getting an affordable plane seat this summer:

* Book early: With fares at historic lows, it’s not reasonable to expect them to drop much more. And if you wait too long, you may be out a seat.

* Fly into a nearby airport: Is Boston booked or too pricey? Try Providence, R.I. If you’re heading for a theme park in the Orlando, Fla., area, check out fares to Tampa or Miami. The money you save may make the extra drive worth it. Many alternate airports close to major destinations, such as Long Beach (Los Angeles), are strongholds of low-fare airlines.

* Try a new place: Fares to midsize cities in the country’s middle have been amazingly low, said Tom Parsons, chief executive officer of Bestfares.com, a travel Web site. “If you’ve always wanted to see the Indy 500, book Indianapolis,” he said. With round-trip fares from the Los Angeles area recently as low as $98 (or $121 during the Indy 500), why not?

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.