Some insight on how trip to Asia turned into a trip around the world.
(a brief exploration on the sometimes bizarre world of airline ticket pricing)
I love traveling with my family. This year, the girls wanted to go to Asia. If you follow these blogs, you know that for the last few years, one of my biggest travel snits has been the crushing cost of transpacific airfare. I’ve noticed how much of that seems to be directly targeting the American market. This isn’t just about cost; it’s also about flexibility. That's how I was able to get a Toronto-Paris-Singapore-Bali fare with multiple days in Paris and Singapore on just one plane ticket (a fare set in Canadian dollars) and a fare from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo (multiple days in Tokyo) and then onto Chicago (a fare set in Malaysian ringgits) for less than just a round trip to Bali from Denver, even with the connector flights to Toronto and the flights in Malaysia added into the mix.
Sitting here at Singapore Airport, having had a great time here, in Paris, and on a side trip to Niagara Falls, I decided to pop in some business class flight comparisons. I picked these at random:
All business class:
Denver to Tokyo (nonstop R/T): $6,632 (the lowest I’ve seen this, by the way)
Vancouver to Tokyo (nonstop R/T): $3,829.51
Denver to Sydney: $9,728 (with a stop R/T)
Vancouver to Sydney: $6,127 (nonstop R/T)
For many years, I would say that it’s fairly hard to find a decently priced one-way ticket out of the United States, but it’s really hard to find a decently priced one-way ticket to the United States. But… that hasn’t been true either. It seems that the airlines' drive to squeeze the American traveler for every penny they can has finally overcome a long-standing truism in international travel.
Denver to Singapore: $4,378.80 (and I had to do the first leg in economy for that price)
Singapore to Denver: $3,576 (all business class). I’ll also point out that United really seems bent on driving Denver tickets to Singapore as high as possible, and fares won’t go too far below $11K with just one stop in SFO; just the SFO-Singapore R/T is under $5K.
These examples were all taken at random, but they provide a clue as to how a trip to Bali for my family and me turned into an around-the-world journey.
I have to say, right now, I’m not sorry about it at all. Four countries down, two more to go.
