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Comment by calinet6 | Hacker News Reader

The grocery stores are agglomerating as well.

Not to mention the airlines, and I just paid a month's rent to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, which I was forced to do because, you know, grandparents have an expiration date, and Thanksgiving is practically a holy day in our family.

I'm tired of it. Monopolies are real, and they tend to be bad for the people they purport to serve. But this is a power feedback loop that has tipped over the edge and probably gotten past control. Where are our checks and balances?

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Airline prices aren't exactly going through the roof.

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/airfares/programs/economics_and_...

To add to this point. My wife just got a ticket from Atlanta to Indianapolis for 49 dollars round trip. . . You can't drive from Atlanta to Indy for 49 dollars.

Atlanta's a major air travel hub, so extra-cheap flights are partially a result of that. If the poster above you has parents that are off the beaten path, it's very likely those $49 deals don't exist for the flight she or he needs.

Atlanta is a hub for many airlines. However, this was Southwest which uses point to point and not hub and spoke.

I'm talking American to Charlotte, a huge US Airways hub. US Airways was just acquired by American making it the world's largest airline.

It's simply demand in the holiday case, but it's still ridiculous. At other times, high demand does not necessary apply and they do all kinds of things to generate demand and compete for butts in seats, especially when fuel prices are low.

But with a high-demand holiday, at a hub almost entirely monopolized by one airline, there is no ceiling to how high they can raise price in response to that demand.

Weird thought -- did you look into flying to GSO? It's ABSURD, but last time I looked, flights from GSO and RDU through CLT were way less than from CLT itself.

I've tried several flight hacks to get there, but they actually live in Charlotte so I'd have to bail on the second leg, which means booking two legs separately and still taking a chance on getting the return one-way cancelled on me for skirting the rules. It's maybe $100 cheaper, not big enough a difference to really make it worth it.

Not to just talk about low fares, but I was amazed recently with a $38 fare from Los Angeles to Chicago. Was with Frontier so there are other fees involved, but still pretty awesome.

Norwegian has incredible fares also, many I've seen for less than $400 round trip Los Angeles to various destinations in Scandinavia.

Competition is important here, but I think low oil prices are driving customer savings.

Depends on the route. Transatlantic flights cost more this past summer than when the oil was > $100/barrel.

Sounds like high demand driven by the slumping Euro.

No way. The tickets were more expensive in Euros too. It's simply a fixed supply of seat demanded by more people than a year ago.

Yeah, more people traveling from US to Europe because the cost of a European vacation has gone down in USD due to the slumping EUR.

That's just economics. Demand in the US for thanksgiving travel goes through the roof. Airlines don't magically have more planes to fly during the holiday (i.e. supply is fixed). The result: prices adjust upwards and force more people to spread out travel over different dates, find alternative arrangements, or forgo travel.

Flights actually cost that much - most airlines don't make much money on the flight itself [0]. A flight with an airline like Spirit or Frontier charge the bare minimum for flights without any extra frills.

[0] http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/24/why-do-airlines-always-lo...

Also note the recent beer giant announcement, that will see the new company own all or part of 15 of the top 20 beers in the US.

That's AB InBev and SABMiller. Rumor is if it goes through many of the American brands in SABMiller will be spun off as this is more a purchase for the global presence of SABMiller.

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