I just got four one-way tickets from Newport News, VA to Portland, ME for $400 in August to close the third leg of our vacation. Couldn't have done that before deregulation.
It's very odd. Casual empiricism suggests an enormous increase in constrained advance-purchase tickets designed to be attractive only those with a large ability to travel on off-peak days and hang out for connections, coupled with an increase in prices associated with business travel at convenient times--where the competitive margin is in (a) convenience, (b) alcohol, and (c) bribes (i.e., frequent flyer files).
I've been looking for something intelligent and economic-anthropological on this for quite a while, and I haven't found anything.
I do, however, find occasional opeds from investment bankers about how it's unfair that his secretary pays only 20% of what he does to be on the same cross-country flight (even though hers is a five-week advance-purchase stay-over-two-Saturday-nights ticket and his is a within-the-week last-minute-purchase round trip).
Brad DeLong