United Airlines is known to be on the pricier side in terms of air service from Saipan to Guam. However, as of late, United\u2019s ticket prices have reached an all-time high at nearly $600 for a roundtrip fare. <\/p>\n
Concerned citizens have reached out to Saipan Tribune regarding United\u2019s recent increase in ticket prices. According to United Airlines\u2019 website, a roundtrip economy ticket from Saipan to Guam now ranges from $580 to $587. <\/p>\n
According to frequent United travelers, the average ticket from Saipan to Guam usually ranges between $300 to roughly $400 for roundtrip. Now, at nearly $600, it has nearly doubled. <\/p>\n
United has yet to issue a statement about the change in their airfare prices. <\/p>\n
Commonwealth Ports Authority Kimberlyn King-Hinds said that CPA is unaware of the decision behind the increase in rates and it could have been a business decision on United\u2019s part. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we want to see reasonable rates and fares and for United, it was probably a business decision and I don\u2019t know what all that entails. Obviously as a resident, you want to be able to travel at a lower cost and now it\u2019s really cost-prohibitive. Last I checked, it\u2019s now $600 to go to Guam. That\u2019s expensive for a little over a 30-minute plane ride,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
As far as helping the airlines bring down their rates, King-Hinds said that would be difficult because if an incentive is offered to one airline, it has to be offered to all the airlines and it\u2019s just not monetarily possible, given CPA\u2019s current financial standing. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be very careful about the types of incentives that we offer because if we offer one person something, we need to offer it to everybody. As to directly reaching out to an airline, we have been cautioned by the federal authorities because that could be seen as incentivizing one over the other and you do have other airlines flying to Guam, to include Marianas Southern Airways and Star Marianas,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The CNMI has other options with commercial carriers like Marianas Southern Airways and Star Marianas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United Airlines is known to be on the pricier side in terms of air service…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":386069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}