America's Rip-off Airports: four in TN on Forbes' list (Memphis: 2009, live in)

[kamoshika]

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.
America's Rip-Off Airports - Forbes.com
In Depth: America's Rip-Off Airports - Forbes.com

No. 3: Tri-Cities Regional Airport (Tie), Blountville
Average fare per mile: $0.39

No. 7: McGhee Tyson Airport (Tie), Knoxville
Average fare per mile: $0.37

No. 18: Memphis International Airport (Tie)
Average fare per mile: $0.35

No. 25: Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Tie)
Average fare per mile: $0.34

[soulful]

The problem is the lack of a low cost carrier competing from those airports. For example, ticket prices are much lower out of Nashville because Southwest Airlines drives down prices.

[Suzanne1945]

TYS has AllegiantAir and not another low fare competitor as SWA.

[gcman]

Being a educated man, and reading this . I ask what is the point of this
post?
I have flown over 24 times from St. Peterburg, Fl to Chattanooga,Tn.
I had many flights at $145.00 round trip 2 people.

I did not think this is a rip off!

Trying driving 10 hours each way.

What do you want 10 cent a mile.

Try flying to Atanta.

By way Southwest cost a lot more to fly to nashville, tn

[vacation bound]

I have to agree with you gman. I fly all the time from St Pete to Chat. It is the best fares I have found, being that I am in the middle of Chat, Knox, and Nash.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by vacation bound

I have to agree with you gman. I fly all the time from St Pete to Chat. It is the best fares I have found, being that I am in the middle of Chat, Knox, and Nash.

It's true that Allegiant Air gives you cheap air fares to 3rd-tier Florida airports such as St Pete and Sanford. But if you want to fly from Chattanooga (or Knoxville or the Tri Cities) to Texas, Chicago, the Northeast, or--heaven help you--out West, you're going to pay a fortune compared to flying out of Nashville.

[Freelander]

Even though I live in KY and am much closer to the Louisville and Lexington Airports, I always fly out of Nashville because it is so much cheaper.

[Jon F Moss]

now now...I wouldn't call Fort Lauderdale a 3rd-tier airport...maybe a 2nd-tier wannabe at best

$29 each way from Chatt

[goodbyehollywood]

Flying out of TYS is ridiculously expensive and inconvenient, since there are so few options. I'd rather drive to Nashville and fly out of there. It costs less and I'll get where I'm going sooner, without changing planes.

TYS is so expensive that some companies I work with have scrapped plans to move people to Knoxville and are either keeping them in L.A. or feeding them into Austin or Nashville. I don't know about the other airports, but from a business perspective, Knoxville absolutely deserves to be on that list.

[RuralGuy]

The situation in Cincinnati is ridiculous. It's so bad that the company I work for, which is based in Cincinnati, generally has those of us who travel fly out of other regional airports (Dayton, Columbus, Lexington, Louisville, or Indianapolis).

Here's an example of the lunacy: A recent trip to Orlando with a flight out of Cincinnati would have cost nearly $600. The flight actually originated in Lexington, had a brief layover in Cincinnati, and then continued on to Orlando. I took that flight out of Lexington, and the cost was less than $300.

The main problem with Cincinnati is that, aside from a handful of daily flights on regional airlines, it's basically a one-airline airport. Delta holds all the cards there.