Please explain how a RT flight on JAL from Narita to Taipei costs the same as a flight from Honolulu to Tapei

Please explain how a RT flight on JAL from Narita to Taipei costs the same as a flight from Honolulu to Tapei?

Japan - 4 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
Have you never heard of supply and demand?
2 :
Prices usually go on how much competition is on a route so if the demand is high the price will be cheaper. For example when I was looking at costs to Egypt a few months ago from Australia a flight to Luxor was well over $3300AUD and a flight to Cairo was a little over $1500.00AUD when a seperate return flight from Cairo to Luxor (obviously a much more popular domestic route than international) was added it was a bit over $300.00AUD meaning the saving was over $1500AUD but even without that domestic flight it was less than half the price and when you look on the map it really is not a huge distance less in fact a direct flight to Luxor would probably be less mileage than a direct flight to Cairo. Main difference being a huge amount of people want to fly to Cairo but hardly anyone wants to fly to Luxor (as an international tourist). On a flight like Sydney to London you have at least 20 international airlines doing that route but on a route like Sydney to Oslo you'd probably only have one airline which could do that route relatively directly and hence the price would be considerably more even though you are travelling a shorter distance. They can name their price pretty much where as flying to London loads more people want to go there so they will want to get out of it as cheaply as possible without being inconvenienced too much. Another determining factor in your example would also be taxes in Narita are amongst the highest in the world. Last year I looked at a flight from Sydney to London on JL which went via Narita and it had $2340AUD taxes!!! That is close to $2000AUD more taxes than some of the other airlines.
3 :
Apple vs Oranges. There are all kinds of outside costs that can affect the price of a ticket. Narita is a very busy airport so they can charge more for the use of the runway, fuel costs can be different, and the full route of the airplane can also have an effect.
4 :
There's a couple reasons why it would cost less to fly farther, and this is applicable to any flight route, not just in Japan or even in the US. First, it very much has to do with supply and demand. The more people want to fly somewhere, the more that airlines will charge. That's just simple economics. Second, it could depend on whether you are flying at a time when the flights are full. The fuller the flights, the more the price goes up. On any flight, you might pay, for example, $500 for a ticket but the guy next to you paid $100 for the same ticket because he bought the ticket before the flight got full. So you might want to play with your dates to see if you can find a less expensive flight. But barring you going for a full flight, the most important reason why short flights might cost more than longer flights in general is competition. If you have only one or two carriers that fly on a specific flight route (say, for example, JFK to Atlanta), those two airlines can charge a very high price knowing that customers have no other options but to fly those airlines. However, if you have several carriers that fly a route (say, Oakland to Las Vegas), the flights will get dirt cheap because they're all competing against each other for customers. That's why deregulation of the airline industry and the subsequent creation of "discount carriers" like JetBlue or Southwest in the US are such a thorn in the side of major "legacy" carriers like United, Delta and American. For decades these legacy carriers could charge astronomical prices for flights, especially in smaller markets where customers were pretty much held hostage to the airlines that serviced their airports. When discount carriers started flying to convenient yet under-served airports, the legacy carriers got killed in the marketplace and had to drop their prices. That's why United, Delta and American have all filed for bankruptcy at one point or another in the past decade or so. Now, as for Japan, I'm not absolutely certain but I suspect that it regulates its airline industry, just like we used to. That means that the government controls what airlines can fly where and how many flights they can have on any route. It minimizes any competition on routes within its country. This artificially inflates prices to protect their national airlines from struggling like our United, Delta and American airlines have.