<p>So I was looking online to see home much it costs to fly from Santa Barbara Airport to San Francisco Airport. I found that it was between $500-$700 for the flight depending on the date! When I actually visited the campus I went to the travel place, which had a sign up that said with the international student ID it costs $190 round trip. While this is considerably less, I was wondering id there is a way to get cheaper flights if you fly out at night or something. It seems that $190 is pretty steep for an hour long flight in state for a student. I am aware that it is cheaper to take Amtrak, but I don't want to have to spend 9 hours (one way) on the train every time I want to see my parents. Thanks for the help.</p>
<p>As someone who lives in San Francisco I'll give you the lowdown:</p>
<p>1) In terms of flights to the immediate Bay Area, Santa Barbara Airport blows when it comes to price. United is the only one that does direct flights (to SFO and SJC), and because of the monopoly they own servicing the Bay Area, the prices end up being targeted towards business travelers and extremely expensive. You have two other options: Going to the STA Travel office in the UCEN (they have a price chart up, the last time I saw it was going for $160 but makes sense that it could have gone up). The other option is flying XpressJet from SBA to Sacramento Intl and getting to the bay from there.</p>
<p>2) In terms of Amtrak, you have two options, taking the Coast Starlight, which I don't recommend due to crappy speed, or the Surfliner from Goleta to San Luis Obispo and then transferring to the Amtrak bus. This takes about 7.5 hours, and while it sucks, is probably the best option.</p>
<p>3) The best option is honestly finding a ride from someone on campus. I can make the drive from San Francisco to Isla Vista in about 5 hours (with my trusty radar detector, heh) and I've given rides to friends and random people I've met on Facebook and LiveJournal.</p>
<p>Thanks. That helped a lot. I will try to find friends, but otherwise, I will just use one of the other two options (depending on how fast I want to get there).</p>
<p>I dont know about SFO but I can fly one way from sac in'tl to SB for 69.99 on an airline called express jet...you can google and search and see if they fly to SF</p>