A FRIEND was researching some airfares this week for a round-trip from Los Angeles to Hong Kong for a mainland friend. The travel will be in March of next year for the annual rugby tournament, so our friend thought since his friend would be traveling all this way, why not stop on Guam for a visit?

He went to the United Airlines website and got a bunch of information, but not much help. It turns out Guam is the single most expensive destination in this part of the world for a trip from the mainland. A round-trip economy class from LA to Seoul, South Korea, for example, was quoted at $915. A round-trip from LA to Guam – $2,027. That’s right, more than twice as much.

So he got curious and plugged in some other combinations:
LAX-Taipei, $1,048.
LAX-Narita, $1,077.
LAX-Beijing, $1,091.
LAX-Ho Chi Minh City, $1,128.
LAX-Singapore, $1,175.
And the destination he wanted – LAX-Hong Kong, $1,177.

Oddly, the website quoted a round-trip LAX-Manila, with a stop on Guam, at $1,350. Even a round-trip to Palau, with a stop on Guam, is less than the Guam trip alone, $1,811.

The friend says a smart flier who wants to come to Guam should book that Manila trip and get off on Guam, then fly to Manila a few days later, sit at the airport for a couple of hours and take the same plane back to Guam and get on the HNL-LAX flight, saving about $700. He was sort of joking, but we know of at least one frequent traveler who used to do that regularly. Guam has always been an expensive destination, even back when Continental was flying the route.

Just to be fair, our friend also priced Delta from LAX to Guam, over Japan, and got a quote of $1,426 if the trip begins on Guam, but $1,846 for a ticket from Los Angeles.

There are a couple of obvious lessons in all of this. One is check back frequently as fare quotes on airline or travel websites change often, sometimes hourly. There is a fellow named Tom Parsons who appears on talk radio occasionally who runs a website called Bestfares.com. He points out that on many flights, nobody will have paid the exact same fare. There are literally tens of thousands of fares and fare combinations just in the U.S. alone.

The second lesson? We will always pay a higher fare to get to and from Guam, until there is more competition on the routes. It’s a basic law of business, and we’re a very small destination.