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Hidden City Ticketing Study: San Francisco (Revised)

August 19, 2014

Updating our study on San Francisco with current airfares, we found that:

  • Airfares to Washington were almost always lower using Hidden City Ticketing
  • Huge wins continued to exist for flights to Atlanta and Boston
  • Good chances to save could be found for Honolulu, New York, Dallas and San Diego
  • Flights to Las Vegas, Chicago, Denver, Seattle and Los Angeles were less fruitful

Note: In our prior study, we compared lowest airfares between two cities using FlyShortcut’s hidden city ticketing vs. conventional flights found by Google Flight Search.  By default, Google Flight Search lists non-stop flights as well as flights with multiple stops, while our search engine only surfaces direct flights.  To ensure we compare apples-to-apples, our new methodology only considers airfares for direct flights.

Below is a city-by-city analysis for all the nerds out there - we love you.  You can also try our search engine to find flights you’re interested in:

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The Big Winners:

San Francisco to Washington (DCA, IAD, BWI)

99% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (89 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $64.

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San Francisco to Atlanta (ATL)

51% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (46 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $101.

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San Francisco to Boston (BOS)

44% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (40 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $28.

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Occasional Savings:

San Francisco to Honolulu (HNL)

31% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (28 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $21.

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San Francisco to New York City (JFK, LGA, EWR)

28% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (25 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $94.

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San Francisco to Dallas (DFW)

12% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (11 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $83.

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San Francisco to San Diego (SAN)

12% arbitrage frequency

Hidden city ticketing beats conventional airfares on most days (11 / 90 days we analyzed) - on average by $39.

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No Dice:

These other popular destinations were analyzed, but unfortunately hidden city ticketing was unable to beat conventional fares to any significant degree:

  • San Francisco to Las Vegas
  • San Francisco to Chicago
  • San Francisco to Denver
  • San Francisco to Seattle
  • San Francisco to Los Angeles

What now?

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