This might just be a US thing, I don’t know. But it seems like if I want to fly somewhere, the cheapest option is to choose the nonstop flight. If I pick a flight with a layover it always costs more.
I don’t think it used to be this way! Flights with stops and layovers were cheaper because of the inconvenience. What’s the point of picking one if they’re more expensive?
At some point airlines stopped doing the hub-and-spoke model where all flight come into one big airport and then passengers change flights onward to their destination. Now they favor the point-to-point model, which as the name suggests means every destination pair is served by an individual flight.
As to why. It’s probably financial but it don’t know for sure really.
My understanding is that it’s related to the decline of three and four engine planes. Originally airlines preferred them over two engined planes because they were safer, had greater range, and could carry more passengers. On the other hand, they were more expensive to operate due to requiring more maintenance and fuel. Additionally, these planes were larger and couldn’t get into places that smaller twinjets could. Eventually technology improved to the point that the (literal) costs of more engines began to outweigh the benefits to airlines. These days most passenger airlines only operate twinjets and the remaining tri- and quadjets are relegated to cargo.
Originally airlines preferred them over two engined planes because they were safer,
Up until ETOPS (aka Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim) was introduced in 1986, it was not even legal to run cross-atlantic flights to and from the U.S with twin engines.
As I understand it, point-to-point taking over from hub-and-spoke coincided with mid-size high-range airplanes like the 787. Before that, the economics of running point-to-point had trouble penciling out, since you needed fairly large aircraft to handle the distance. Hence, hub-and-spoke made sense - run small aircraft to and from hubs and then run a large long-range aircraft carrying a large amount of passengers.
I assume it takes more fuel to take off twice than to maintain flight after taking off once. Not an expert by any means.
Not only that, you need to consider the following:
Airport fees, airlines pay fees to the airport to use a runway to land and take off, then you have parking fees, passenger service fees and more.
You also need to consider that the crew have mandatory rest periods, and if they won’t make it to the next airport in time, then they can’t take off again, and hotels for the pax arearranged or a replacement crew flown in this costs money.
I’ve noticed that anecdotally as well. There are a lot of good points already listed in other comments, and I have a couple merely additive points.
On an individual passenger basis, direct flying has always been operationally cheaper if both options exist, because it’s a more efficient use of resources. In practice, financial efficiency also requires keeping all flights as full as possible, so it was maybe helpful for an airline to incentive a customer to keep hub flights full by pricing connections lower than a direct. The direct flight is arguably more valuable to a customer because it’s a better experience, so it can cost more. All three flights are going to fly anyway, so making the sale is most important to the airline.
But equally or more important, the overall volume of air travel passengers has grown enormously over the past several decades. I’d bet that many direct routes didn’t used to have enough pairwise volume to run a regularly full profitable flight, let alone multiple competing direct options. Now I expect a ton more pairs of cities to make economic sense.
Looking at it another way, that increased travel volume over decades also came with larger airports to support more total trips, and each of those new flights need to go somewhere. Airlines can add more options throughout the day to cities already served, and they can add new cities. They naturally choose both, therefore more direct routes are created. As more direct routes have supporting volume, the inefficiencies of the hub and spoke model dominate the bottom line.
Airlines are charged for every landing, docking, refuel, etc they do at every airport. So for the same flight from A to Z, it you stop at E, J, and T airports, the airline is shelling out money for each of those three pitstops.
That’s contributing to the cost of stopover flights.
Why are nonstop flights cheaper than flights with stops
[citation needed]
I just did a bunch of test searches on kayak and i couldn’t even find a flight that wasn’t direct
EDIT
I don’t know how reputable these sources are, but all the links i can find say that multi leg flights are still significantly cheaper
https://dollarflightclub.com/articles/direct-flights-vs-layovers-which-saves-more/
https://thriftytraveler.com/news/travel/nonstop-flight-vs-layover/
Try pairs of smaller airports or small airport to major airport very far away. Bet there are no direct flights from Wasila AK to Paris, France.
OP is talking about booking flights where you can choose between nonstop or layovers. If it’s not possible to get a nonstop, then it’s just as bad for comparison as if it’s not possible to get a layover.
Sure, but if there are ONLY multi-leg flights then that doesn’t show us if direct flights are cheaper or more expensive
deleted by creator
Nope, i just tried a couple of test searches out of Pittsburgh to North Dakota and Las Vegas and there were only direct flights
Nonstops being cheaper makes sense to me. Planes make money in the air, not sitting on the ground. A connection means one plane has to land (and stop making money) before another can take off (and start making money again). The whole process of deplaning passengers, unloading baggage, cleaning a plane for the next flight, and restocking the service items is at least doubled with a single stop, and tripled for two stops. None of that makes money, and only costs the airline. Also, airlines have to pay gate fees at airports. A direct flight means one gate fee, connections mean multiple gate fees.
Direct flights costing less are how the low-cost airlines got started. They weren’t burdened with providing flights to everywhere (with frequent partially filled planes). Low-cost carriers could cherry pick the best direct routes, and pack the planes full selling nearly every seat. The traditional airlines, seeing their lunch eaten by the low cost carriers, started using the same business model and introduced the “basic economy fare”. That may be part of what you’re seeing with cheaper non-stops.
I don’t think connectors were cheaper because of inconvenience, I think they made them cheaper to entice flyers so they could fill local connector flights.
