Is there an airline that will take me to a less popular destination for less money

April 10, 2009 10:22 AM

Are there domestic airlines that charge less to fly to you to and from smaller cities?

I heard about an airline, the name of which now escapes me, that will charge substantially less for a trip to and from smaller airports maybe twenty miles away from the bigger cities. Fees like baggage are upfront and optional. Do you know what that airline was, and are there others like it? Alternative question, then: How do I do get to some bigger destinations (LA, Chicago) for little money, especially if I can stand some hassle? I don't have to fly but I do want to get there within a day or two.

posted by ramenopres to travel & transportation (10 comments total)

Was it Southwest? They have a strategy of favoring smaller airports.
posted by phoenixy at 10:27 AM on April 10

I think maybe the airline you were thinking of is Skybus, which no longer exists.
posted by amarynth at 10:30 AM on April 10 [2 favorites]

I assume you mean in the US. Ryan Air does this in the UK and sometimes the airports are way the hell out there. If you travel in the US often you can find airlines that have cheaper tickets for airports a little out of the way. Search engines like kayak.com will often let you search "nearby" airports and you can include all of these.

So, some examples. I live in Central Vermont and I have three airports that are reasonable distances

- Burlington VT - one hour drive
- Manchester NH - 90 minute drive
- Boston MA - 30 min drive, free parking, then two hour bus ride

For some destinations, Manchester is the cheaper airport, especially on Southwest. When I flew to DC, I got a much better price to go from Manchester to Baltimore and take the train into DC than I would have going from Burlington to DC direct. Now, you also have to figure in stuff like parking (often cheaper at smaller airports, it's half the cost to park at Burlington than it is in Boston) and ground transportation (very easy at Baltimore and DC so it's a crapshoot there) and timing (Burlington is CLOSED late at night, other airports are more round the clock).

I'm sure there are other airports that have similar things. I think Southwest going in to Midway may be another example in your area. When you fly into LA, often LAX is cheaper because it's so huge and a ton of airlines are flying in and out of there, but there's also Long Beach and a few other nearby airports. When I was staying in Anaheim, it was easier/cheaper for me to fly into LAX from Boston and then take the bus down to Anaheim, for example.

Sometimes the ground trasnportation to get into the big city will cost just as much as the flight cost differential, so it's worth planning out the total cost of the trip. This is just for my part of the country, I think other parts have their own regional cheapie airlines.
posted by jessamyn at 10:32 AM on April 10

Are you thinking of Skybus, maybe? They went under about a year ago, but they flew to a lot of "off-brand" destinations.

As far as getting to Chicago without using Midway or O'Hare, you might also try looking into Milwaukee or South Bend; in both cases, train service from the airport to Chicago is pretty easy.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:32 AM on April 10

You could try using kayak.com to search for flights, they have a checkbox labeled something like 'search nearby airports', and it'll find the cheapest flights. Might also check Southwest's website directly, I think for some reason they aren't listed by kayak. Also the day of the week can have a big impact on the cost, you might be able to save like 30% by flying on wens. instead of fri. for example -- again another option on kayak is to search +/- 3 days from your specified date to find the cheapest flight.
posted by davr at 10:36 AM on April 10

Skybus *was* one such airline. I am sure there are others but a word to the wise...these things are run on a shoestring. A group I was with tried to use Skybus to travel between Columbus, OH and Bellingham, WA (north of Seattle) for a trip up north across the border. The airline had some plane troubles which caused them to cancel our flights a mere 12 hours beforehand 6pm for a 6am flight. The next available flight from them was days later which would of course ruined a good chunk of our vacation. We were lucky to make alternative arrangements.
posted by mmascolino at 10:38 AM on April 10

Hm. Jet Blue is a cheaper airline. As far as LA goes, you can fly into Long Beach Airport and drive into LA (which is about 45 minutes). It should be cheaper.
posted by majikstreet at 10:55 AM on April 10

You might want to look into ExpressJet.
posted by Pants! at 11:21 AM on April 10

Seconding JetBlue. For LA, you can fly into Burbank. Driving time would be about 20 minutes from there (give or take about 20 minutes in cases of traffic and such). They usually also have a terminal at each of the big airports, so you still stand a chance of being able to fly without too much inconveneince.
posted by arishaun at 1:54 PM on April 10

Was it Allegiant? I know from flying to family gatherings in Tennessee that they have the best price, by far, flying into the Tri-Cities Regional airport from the Sanford airport here in Florida.
posted by XcentricOrbit at 11:49 AM on April 11