America's Rip-Off Airports

Travelers looking to keep costs low might avoid these pricey spots.

Back in the 1960s there were a number of disturbing sightings in the woods outside Point Pleasant, W.Va. Hundreds of locals reported seeing a 7-foot-tall monster with glowing red eyes and giant moth-like wings. The "Mothman" was blamed for the mutilation of dozens of dogs and for the collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967, which killed 46 people.

Perhaps even more frightening to the residents of Point Pleasant is today's airborne terror: The sky-high price of flying out of the area's major airports. The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, a two-hour drive away, is America's most expensive; travelers starting their trip there last year paid a whopping average fare of 48 cents per mile. Nearby Yeager Airport in Charleston, W.Va., is tied for seventh-worst at 37 cents per mile.

These figures may not seem like much, but they're more than double the average cost of flying from Florida's Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport (16 cents) and California's Long Beach/Daugherty Field Airport (15 cents), both among the country's cheapest.

While there are rip-off airports scattered across the country, most are concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast. Following Cincinnati and rounding out the top three are Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Mich., and Tri-Cities Airport near Johnson City, Tenn. The Charlotte, N.C., Douglas International Airport, ranked seventh-worst, is the largest in the top 10.

The two most expensive large airports on the list, Cincinnati and Charlotte, are both big hubs in medium-sized cities, which means that their hub carriers end up with massive market shares and a prodigious pricing power. In Cincinnati, Delta Air Lines and its regional affiliates boast an 87% market share. In Charlotte, U.S. Airways and its partners enjoy more than 65% market share--and this number may be even higher due to U.S. Airways' regional affiliates that aren't big enough to show up in our data.

"Hub airlines know they can still charge you more without losing you," says Jan Brueckner, an economics professor at University of California, Irvine, who studies and does consulting for the airline industry. "The hub premium is some combination of carriers exploiting local residents and charging more for a better product."

Behind the Numbers

To find the worst rip-offs, we used data from the Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey, which includes price and routing information for a 10% sample of all U.S. domestic commercial airline tickets. From the 3 million records collected during the third quarter of 2008 (the most recent available), we computed average price per route mile for each airport in the survey.

The prices here represent average price per route mile for itineraries that begin at the airports listed. For instance, suppose a traveler buys a round-trip ticket from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to San Francisco International, paying $300 for the 3,700-mile round trip. That comes out to $0.081 per route mile, which we would include in Chicago's average.

We removed itineraries with listed fares of $0, as well as airports with sample sizes too small to provide reliable estimates. So even though Hawaii's Lihue Municipal airport and Aspen's Pitkin County Airport clocked in at a whopping 40 cents per mile each, their remote locations and relatively low traffic levels made them ineligible for our list.

The country's cheapest airport? That would be Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Alaska, with an average fare per mile of 14. cents. Though the citizens of Anchorage don't have to worry about giant supernatural moth creatures ruining their day, they've got troubles of their own; the airport's namesake, the pork-guzzling Ted Stevens, just lost his Senate seat after 40 years in office and is now on trial for corruption.

In Depth: America's Rip-Off Airports

No. 1: Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Average fare per mile: $0.48
Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey

No. 2: Cherry Capital Airport
Location: Traverse City, Mich.
Average fare per mile: $0.41
Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey

No. 3: Tri-Cities Regional Airport (Tie)
Location: Johnson City, Tenn.
Average fare per mile: $0.39
Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey

No. 3: Columbia Metropolitan Airport (Tie)
Location: Columbia, S.C.
Average fare per mile: $0.39
Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey

No. 5: Duluth International Airport (Tie)
Location: Duluth, Minn.
Average fare per mile: $0.38
Department of Transportation's Origin and Destination Survey

Click here to see the full list of America's rip-off airports.