Bus, plane ticket prices high during holidays

Pitt sophomore Alexandra Brosovich sees her family only two or three times a year.

At the… Pitt sophomore Alexandra Brosovich sees her family only two or three times a year.

At the end of finals week, she’ll embark on a long-awaited visit back to her home in Atlanta, Ga. But as excited as she is to get home, Brosovich can attest that her trips to the South are anything but cheap.

“It’s definitely hard,” said Brosovich, a history and political science major. “Especially because I’m already kind of financially unstable in this economy. I’m already having to spend money on tuition, books and housing, and having to spend the extra money to see my family is really hard.”

Brosovich flies home for winter break, summer and occasionally Thanksgiving. This year, she said she spent about $300 on her round-trip plane ticket to get home after finals.

Around the holiday season each year, airlines and other transportation companies like Megabus and Amtrak raise

their ticket prices. The increase in prices for these companies is mostly based on the demand for available tickets, which often lines up with the times students go home for breaks.

“As the demand goes up, the prices go up,” said Nicole Thomas, a marketing major. “That’s just what you get with the market. It encourages people to plan ahead of time.”

Thomas, a junior who lives in Harrisburg, takes the Megabus home from Pitt four times each year. She said the most she has paid for a Megabus round-trip ticket to Harrisburg is about $30, which is cheaper than paying for the gas and tolls if she were to drive her car to and from home.

“I think [Megabus] is great for students and it’s very affordable,” she said. “They have WiFi on the bus, and they drop me off just fifteen minutes from my house.”

According to Dale Moser, the president and Chief Operating Officer of Coach USA Megabus.com, gas prices do not play a role in determining ticket pricing, which keeps ticket prices fairly consistent throughout the year.

“We use a yield-managed pricing model that we designed [to determine ticket pricing],” Moser said. “It varies based on the time of day you travel, and demand for certain trips. It’s very similar to what airlines have been doing for 20-plus years.”

The most important factor in determining ticket pricing is demand, according to Moser, which explains the reason ticket prices increase around Thanksgiving and the holiday season.

“[Megabus ticket prices] might move … two or three dollars, based on demand,” Moser said. “They’ll decrease after the new year — January 4th or 5th — as travel goes down. They’ll start to go back up in March or April, and usually stay that way until the next New Year season.”

Megabus operates on a system where ticket prices are lowest as soon as a route is added. As more and more tickets are purchased per route, the prices increase. Because of this, it’s best for cost-conscious students to purchase tickets as early as possible.

Many students who value convenience and enjoy riding home with other Panthers take advantage of the Pitt Buses Home for the Holidays program, which run for Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks. Chartered buses pick students up outside the William Pitt Union and take them to 13 locations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, New York and Washington, D.C.

The prices for round-trip bus tickets range from $80 to $125.

Another option for students who don’t mind spending time on the road is the Amtrak train. Amtrak trains stop at 500 locations throughout the country, including major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. Like Megabus, Amtrak prices are driven by the demand for tickets.

“Amtrak has multiple price levels for each city pair, which are sold based on demand and available capacity,” said Danielle Hunter, an Amtrak spokeswoman. “Generally, these levels are based on historical precedent, market response to prices, competitive forces and economic forces.”

But the quickest — and most expensive — way for eager students to get home is to fly.

Students like Brosovich pay for more expensive plane tickets during the holiday season. A typical round-trip ticket to Philadelphia during the holiday season costs about $150, not including taxes. During the offseason, the same ticket is priced at about $70.

“Fares are not automatically increased during the holidays,” said Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Ashley Dillon. “The economic environment does play a role in the cost of fares. If jet fuel prices are at all-time highs, we may have to increase ticket prices to adjust for the increase in our costs. We do this as a last measure, always looking for ways to decrease our costs.”

Dillon also said that Southwest Airlines takes into account seat availability, demand and the frequency of flights when determining ticket prices.

Despite the financially draining cost of transportation in today’s economy, Pitt students will continue to pay the extra bucks to get home for the holidays.

For William Lauhoff, a sophomore who plans to take the Pitt shuttle back to his home in Philadelphia, the costs are unavoidable.

“I’ll keep paying the price because I have to,” he said.