LOS ANGELES â You can fly from Burbank to Bozeman, Montana, one of the gateways to Yellowstone National Park, for $38 round trip, thanks to fares offered for Aug. 11-18 on startup Avelo Airlines. Super deal. Then you decide to book a rental car. The best price for an on-airport rental that turned up on Kayak, a search aggregator, was â wait for it â $2,028 for a week. Thatâs through Hertz, which chooses the model for you and asks you to pay in advance.
Welcome to car wars, the rental version, another side effect of the pandemic. This one threatens to make your rental, usually an afterthought, more expensive than your plane ticket.