America's Cheapest and Most Expensive Airports

Feb. 10, 2010 — -- "Why is my airport so expensive?" I hear this question all the time, and here's the answer. The airfare you purchase to fly from your airport is expensive because the facility is A) Small and a fairly long drive to the nearest larger airport, or B) There's little or no competition, especially low-cost airline competition, or C) both.

Let's take a look at the latest list of "most expensive" airports in the U.S., as defined by the government's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS); the numbers crunchers there base this list on a 10 percent sample of airline tickets sold during July, August and September of 2009.

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1. Huntsville, Ala.

2. Grand Rapids, Mich.

3. Savannah, Ga.

The BTS has the complete list and lots more fun numbers, but let's dissect these three, shall we? And keep reading for tips on how to avoid these most expensive airports. And yes, we will get to the cheapest airports shortly.

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Now while Huntsville, Grand Rapids and Savannah are hardly villages (Grand Rapids has a population of close to 200,000, Savannah's at 132,000 with Grand Rapids falls somewhere in between), all three are small towns in airport parlance.

These are regional airports and passengers who patronize them pay a penalty. Fly out of Huntsville, Grand Rapids, Savannah, Knoxville, Tenn., or any number of smaller airports and you'll pay an average of $50 to $150 more per roundtrip ticket than you would for flights out of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.