So You Want to Fly at Rush Hour? Get Ready to Pony Up

Let's say you're a New Yorker who wants to fly to San Francisco. You're interested in traveling on a Friday and returning the following Wednesday. When you start checking ticket prices, you notice the Friday evening flights and the Wednesday afternoon flights are going for about twice the price of flights at less desirable times of day. What do you do: Take the flights that best fit your plans, no matter what the cost? Or fly at less convenient times to save some money?

Transportation Department Secretary Norman Mineta is betting that plenty of Americans will opt for the latter. Wednesday, Mineta appeared before a congressional committee to outline his plan to hike up ticket prices for peak-hour flights — thereby, he hopes, reducing congestion around the nation's airports. While a form of this pricing structure already exists, thanks to simple market pressures, this formula would take much of the guesswork out of pricing flights, establishing a definitive ancillary expense for peak-hour flyers.

It's about time: In a report that will come as no surprise to any frequent flyer, the Transportation Department?s inspector general announced that more than one of every four flights last year was delayed, canceled or sent to another airport. And as the incidence of traffic-related problems and complaints has skyrocketed, the airlines and the government have tossed around ideas aimed at easing America's travel woes, including lowering ticket prices on non-peak travel. Most plans focus on the consumer, but a few have made their way into the airlines' realm as well: Mineta is also said to be considering bonuses for airlines that use runways and gates at less busy times, and likewise penalizing those that insist on landing, on, say, Friday at 6 p.m at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Consumer groups, while not exactly thrilled with Mineta's plans, know they haven't been able to come up with anything better themselves. They find themselves, in other words, in a singularly bad position to complain. AAA, the nation's largest travel organization, took a poll earlier this year and found that nearly 90 percent of their membership would be willing to pay more for airline tickets if it would help alleviate delays. Everyone, it seems, has collected a nightmare airline story in the past two years. And we all may be ready to shell out a bit more money for a little peace of mind.