After Saturday, only US Airways offers direct flights from Boston to Philadelphia – and by then, its prices will have effectively doubled.
This means that in the foreseeable future, commuters who wish to go from Boston to Philadelphia in less than two hours will pay about twice as much as what they would have paid a week ago, about $520, according to Orbitz.
The price shift comes after Southwest Airlines dropped its own Boston-Philadelphia route, leaving US Airways in control of the market.
Southwest Airlines, the only other service to currently provide non-stop flights for the route, announced earlier this week they would no longer offer that option to travelers.
“It’s just a route that wasn’t profitable for us. With the cost of fuel and the economic downturn we just decided to discontinue that route,” said Southwest Spokeswoman Ashley Dillon in an official blog post, noting that Southwest often adds and subtracts flights to and from its offerings.
Southwest currently runs about five direct flights a day between the two cities, she said. The airline will continue to offer one-stop flights between the cities.
“I think that it’s a popular route, just one that we couldn’t sustain,” Dillon said.
Phil Orlandella, director of media relations at Logan International Airport, said Logan will lose some of its business.
“Southwest has six flights a day, seven days a week [for that route],” he said. “We’re losing [about] 43 flights a week.”
It is a small percentage, but it is still a dent, he said,
Orlandella said the non-stop route connecting Boston to Philadelphia tends to be useful for businessmen and women, adding, “I’m sure that other airlines are looking at it for their market.”
But after Saturday, “US Airways has the market on [the route].”
Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman for US Airways, said the airline will continue to offer customers an alternative to Boston-Philadelphia flights that involve layovers.
“We have 15 flights a day in that route,” he said. “We offer a lot of things that our competitors don’t offer.”
US Airways cannot discuss possible future prices, the airline said in a statement emailed to The Daily Free Press.
Last week, when Southwest Airlines was still in the Boston-Philadelphia direct flight market, prices hovered at about $220 round-trip, according to the statement. Current prices for the same trip are about $300 more.
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Jess Hackel – “from the Philly area, right outside the city,” she said – said if prices remain at that rate, about $520 per ticket, she will stop flying home.
“I used to take the Southwest flight,” she said. “It used to go . . . at a really cheap rate, $70 to $100 per roundtrip. Now I don’t really know what I’m going to do to get home and I’m probably going to have to resort to Megabus or BoltBus.”
Taking a bus is cheaper than taking a plane – about $50 to $60 per round trip – but many bus companies clock the trip in at more than six hours each way.
Taking a flight, Hackel said, “was much cheaper than the train. It was definitely worth it. And from my dorm to the airport when I landed, it was much faster.”
Hackel said now, with only US Airways providing more expensive flights than the ones she had been used to, she would have to choose between riding a bus and riding a train.
But she said “Amtrak is outrageously priced” for the amount of travel time.
A round trip by train from Boston to Philadelphia without stops costs about $200, according to the Amtrak website, and takes about five hours to complete – about the same amount of time that a one-stop plane trip takes for the route.
The direct trip, via the Acela Express, often appeals to business commuters, said Amtrak Spokesman Cliff Cole.
“Speaking generally, most of the people who use the Acela are people using it for business. They appreciate the convenience,” he said, adding that train stations tend to involve easier security and less wait time than airports.
He said it would be difficult to predict whether or not ridership on Boston-Philadelphia routes will increase after Southwest Airlines drops the direct route.
Sophomore Lisa Vittorio, a CAS student from the Philadelphia area, said she uses Amtrak often. “It’s just easier to get to the train system,” she said. “And with flights you have to book it early to get a good deal, so the train is usually cheaper.”
Hackel said even with the train, she will miss flying.
“Since we don’t have cars here,” she said, “having that option was sort of like a safety net. It was comforting to know that if I had to go home I could. Now I don’t have that.”
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The last two paragraphs don’t seem to be from the correct story.
There is no sense in flying this route. Amtrak provides a cheaper train as well as the Acela which is faster and more for business people. There are also half a dozen bus companies. Flying just makes no sense whatsoever.