Why is this very short flight more expensive than a much longer flight

Real World Aviation
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So I was just looking at different flights from my home airport of PHL because why not and I looked up the flight from PHL-LAX, the flight is 6 hours and AA flies their A330 or A321. The flight was $259 round trip

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(And Shoutout to Spirit’s less than $200 flight)
Anyway, I also looked at the short flight from PHL-ABE. It is a quick 45 min flight in an AA Eagle ERJ. It is only 1 hour and 10 minutes to drive between the airports but the flight costs $363.
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Why is this flight so expensive compared to LAX. And you probably wouldn’t save any time flying vs driving between the cities so I don’t know why you would fly. My only thought is that nobody is going to Allentown (ABE) for tourism while people May be going to LA for leisure and businesses are more willing to pay more money

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Probably because American Eagle operates that route only, and there is no competition on the PHL-ABE route, so American can price the route however they’d like

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Because there is competition on PHL-LAX. AA can charge much more to smaller airports because of little demand and high fees per passenger

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That makes sense but then wouldn’t it be easier to rent a car and drive for 1 hour

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If you don’t mind hitting traffic, then sure.

There are routes where only one airline flies it, and if there is no competitor, then the airline will charge higher prices for that route

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Most likely no competition, lower load factor reducing profit margins hence high pricing.

Check this out:

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Canada is the worst though. YYZ-MNL is cheaper than YYZ-YVR

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Uhh… I’m seeing prices 800+ USD for YYZ-MNL and 250 USD for YYZ-YVR

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um what… everyday I check because I want to visit my family and prices can almost get to 850$
CAD

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I can bet that all passengers on that flight are connecting from anywhere else and nobody is actually flying to ABE from Phily. This is the hub and spoke model.

There are several reasons (namely convenient parking and shorter TSA lines) to fly out of smaller airports if you live nearby, even if the hub is only a 1-hour drive away.

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It’s impossible that every passenger taking ABE-PHL is connecting. They may be visiting family, touring the city, have businesses, or other reasons.

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It very much is. You’d lose more time on getting to the airport, parking, and going through TSA than if you were to just drive from PHL to ABE, not to mention that you need a vehicle upon arrival anyway.
It’s just not reasonable to fly time- and money-wise.

These flights are solely for getting the connecting passengers back home.

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It’s because they don’t actually want people to fly that route. They keep it available because, I mean they will take your money, but no one in there right mind would take that flight. Now if your coming from LA, SFO, ORD, MIA, even Europe or something that flight makes a lot of sense. I bet a flight from LAX to ALE costs not much more than just LAX to PHL, the flight is made for connections, Wendover explains this very well, let me see if I can find the video…

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Flying in Canada is the worst, at least now I have Swoop at my airport.

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Check out this video it explains exactly what is happening here.

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