Grant just had some in-depth and helpful posts about the best times to buy airline tickets. That got me thinking about a couple recent near-purchases on my part. What's confounded me when checking out ticket prices is how geographic distance often has little correlation with the cost of the flight. Yesterday I was checking on flights from Newark, USA to Port Moresby, Papa New Guinea. The cheapest economy ticket? $4,000.

Yet some other equally hard to get places are somehow cheaper. A while back, I was trying to book a ticket to Easter Island, which by the way is the place farthest away from another piece of land (2,000 miles). You would think tickets would be expensive, right? They were only $1,600! Flying to the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, was even cheaper. Less than $1,000. And a Newark to Beijing flight for me in March was only $800.

What about you? Keeping other things constant, which means I'm not talking about booking a ticket for tomorrow, what is the most expensive place you've flown to in economy class?

Filed under: Business, Airlines, Transportation