Delta special: SFO to OAK for $69?

My friend Sean Ness received the above Delta Weekly Fare Specials email this morning. Note that one of the (erroneous?) specials is a $69 each-way fare from Oakland to San Francisco. That's a 31 mile trip airport to airport across the Bay Bridge, so perhaps it would actually be cheaper to fly than, say, take a taxi?

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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RedShirt77

Bastards try to get a first born to get you from Minnesota to anywhere.
moioci

I remember reading about a guy maybe 10 years ago who boarded a flight in SF bound for Oakland. After they’d been in the air for a couple of hours, he asked the flight attendant why it was taking so long to cross the bay. Turns out the flight was to Auckland, as in New Zealand, 12 or more hours away. The airline gave him a free ticket back to San Francisco the next day.
lolbrandon

It might be cheaper to fly, but at least the taxi driver probably won’t rape you before you get in the car.
PixelFish

EvilNilla: Since BART could easily be mistaken for a proper name, “the BART” is an easy disambiguation for the transit system. Anyway, I know plenty of peeps who call it “the BART”. (Oh, look, the comment after me also called it the BART.) This may arise from using the phrase to refer to the BART trains, or the BART station. Regardless, I will continue to use the BART as my noun and BART as my verb for taking said transit, which will undoubtedly make any student of trademarks wince. (I also Photoshop and Google.)
Stefan Jones

About ten years back, I was searching various cheap-travel sites for a flight from the Bay Area to NYC.

Two trips caught my eye. $600 from San Francisco to Newark, and $350 from San Jose to Newark.

The $350 trip included a segment from San Jose to SFO, where it continued on the SAME flight from SFO to Newark.

Needless to say, I booked the $350 flight. I took the CalTrain to San Jose airport and checked in. I was expecting to get on a helicopter or commuter flight.

It turned the connection was a bus.

I’ve since found flight to Philadelphia that were cheaper than a flight to Newark, which were composed of a flight to Newark and a train ticket to Philly.

So.

I wonder if we’re dealing with a ground connection that somehow slipped in as a flight segment.
- jackie31337
  
  Years ago when I used to work for an airline, I would routinely see cross-country flights (say, Boston to SFO via a hub city) that were cheaper than flights from the departure city to the hub city. Sometimes passengers noticed the same thing and the only explanation I could give them was that the longer route was a promotional offer. I’m sure a lot of people were tempted to book the cheaper trip and just not make the connection. I think these days, the airline cancels your whole flight if you don’t get on the plane at the origin city to prevent people from doing exactly that.
Anonymous

It is actually $11.80 to get from SFO to OAK via BART. $8.80 on the train, and then there’s a $3 shuttle from Coliseum Bart to OAK.
… And then you’re at the oakland airport. yay?
coaxial

I was really hoping I’d have to change planes in Atlanta. That’s what Delta wants me to do if I fly SFO to STL.
chris23

Apparently they actually catapult passengers from OAK to SFO, right over the Bay.
rebdav

It might be cheaper than a taxi but nothing is worth the pain and delay of the TSA searches.
Teller

Flight will be delayed at SFO. Oh, it’s Delta not United. Maybe it’ll leave on time.
Antinous / Moderator

Have you been on the Bay Bridge? It seems reasonable to me.
- knodi
  
  I think you’re forgetting that you have to get there two hours early, and deal with security and so forth.
unklstuart

But that price to Salt Lake City is good. The snow is righteous.
Anonymous

Yeah, but the stopover in LAX slows thing down a bit.
Anonymous

I did actually have to take a taxi from SFO to OAK once (was doing too much business travel, spaced out and took Bart the wrong direction. Doh!). It cost about $90. A painful lesson to learn, but I made my flight.
Anonymous

Not trying to advertise for anyone here, but I recently got fares for $40 each way Las Vegas to San Francisco through Virgin… so, yup!
Kyosti

I’m still looking for the SFO-OAK-SJC special.
Anonymous

Is it a direct flight or are you routed through SLC? Would be worth finding out.
- Anonymous
  
  No, you have a layover in San Jose, CA. airport.
dbrown

When I was very young — circa late 1970s — I was returning to SFO on a family vacation, from either Boston or Denver. We landed at Oakland first, and then took off again and flew to SFO. I was too little to know what it was all about, but I remember the flight — it was short! There was a full moon, I think. My parents said they never even pressurized the plane.

I was eight or so and just thought this was normal, flying from Oakland to San Francisco.
PixelFish

Cheaper to fly? Pffft! The BART isn’t working?
- David Pescovitz
  
  Sorry! I accidentally left out part of the sentence. I meant to write that it would perhaps be cheaper to fly than take a taxi!
sci-curious

OR you could just take the BART. It’s a wopping $10.80. It’ll get you there in a little over an hour.
- laureltree
  
  $10.80 for Coliseum to Milbrae? maybe fore a 2 way trip..? course I haven’t lived in the bay area for like 5 months so I wouldn’t know.
  
  well if you’re just feeling fancy and want to be flown across the bay it’s a cheap alternative to a private jet!
dequeued

I think it’s just a shuttle bus.
Taniwha

Years ago there used to be a regular United placement flight from SFO to Oakland sometimes it would fill up with people wanting the 500 minimum frequent flier miles before the end of the next period
EvilNilla

Two things:
1) @PixelFish – One of my peeves is people calling BART “The Bart”. It’s not a freeway in SoCal, it’s a proper noun. I physically cringe each time someone says “The Bart”.
2) Did anyone else notice that Feb 27-Mar 2 is a whopping 4 days long for this special. Saturday – Tuesday.
Delta may want to implement some sort of “human-review” of their automated fare processes.
- Fred Ochsenhirt
  
  The OAK-SFO fare was a mistake. It’s gone now. These specials are always valid only for travel on Saturday, returning on Monday or Tuesday. That’s why they’re weekly web specials.
mlc

31 miles by car, perhaps, but only 11 miles by air, which is presumably why Delta is able to offer you such amazing savings.
Brainspore

I can’t wait until they finish that high-speed rail line so I can get from SFO to OAK in 5 minutes or so.
Zan

Maybe it’s like the Full House episode (S06E01: Come Fly with Me), and although you think you’re going across the bay from SFO to Oakland (OAK), you’re actually going from SFO to Aukland (AKL) — you just misheard.
Anonymous

If you’re actually trying to get from San Francisco to Oakland, you’re probably not starting at SFO or going to OAK. The airports are out in the boonies where land is cheaper and buildings are not big, and thus it costs more to go port-to-port than between real human destinations, which are closer together in the cities.

Also, if you really want to minimize the cost there’s probably still a, what’s it called, a C-TRANS bus that runs across the Bay Bridge? I bet that’s hella cheap, even in these absurd twenty-first-century Monopoly dollars they’re making us use now.
Anonymous

Or you could take the BART for a couple bucks each way. (It was around $7 the last time I was in the area.)
Anonymous

Delta’s New Fare Guarantee: Fly Anywhere within the continental US for less than $1,800 (round trip)….yeah!