If you’re taking an airline to or from some major U.S. metro areas, you have your choice of two or more airports. To an increasing extent, your choice of airport may have a significant impact on how much you pay for your trip. And it often can affect the amount of hassle you must endure to get where you’re going.
Why would you head anywhere but a region’s main airport? The most obvious reason is an airport’s location within the metro area. If you’re taking the kids to Disneyland, for example, both Orange Country and Long Beach airports are much closer than Los Angeles International. If you’re visiting friends in Westchester County, N.Y., White Plains is closer than La Guardia and much closer than JFK or Newark. If you’re a techie heading for a conference in Northern California’s “Silicon Valley,” San Jose is right next door, while San Francisco International is 40 miles up the freeway.
But location isn’t the only factor to consider. It sometimes pays to head for a second-tier field even when you have to drive a bit farther. Several of the country’s second-tier airports have become centers for low-fare airlines.
Probably the most active is Chicago’s Midway, where low-fare airlines rule the roost. Midway is the only field in Chicago where you can catch a flight on Southwest, the country’s primary low-fare airline. In addition, all of the new start-up lines that serve Chicago use Midway exclusively-American Trans Air, Kiwi, Midway Airlines, Private Jet and several more in the planning stage.
Similarly, Oakland and San Jose have become the main low-fare airports for the San Francisco area: Although Southwest has a few flights from San Francisco International, it uses mainly Oakland and San Jose, as do start-ups Morris and Reno. In the Boston area, the low-fare lines have zeroed in on the Worcester (Mass.) airport. Around Washington, D.C., you catch your low-fare flights at Baltimore. In the New York area, Newark has the biggest share of the action (although you can find at least some low-fare flights at La Guardia, JFK and Long Island’s MacArthur).
And low-fare lines are targeting still more second-tier airports for future flights. Among those mentioned are Stewart Field (for the New York area), Holman field in St. Paul, Minn., and airports in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Santa Fe, N.M., that currently don’t have any commercial airline service at all.
Second-tier airports can let you cut the hassle of air travel, too. To those of us who’ve been flying since the ’50s and ’60s, the smaller second-tier fields are a welcome throwback to the days when air travel was simpler. Then, at even the busiest fields, you needed to walk only a few steps from your car to the check-in counter and a few more to the gate. The parking lot was just across the access roadway, and the rental cars were in a preferred position in that close-in lot.
Of course, a second-tier field doesn’t always fill the bill. For the most part, flights are limited to other major cities in the same general region plus, perhaps, a few of the biggest midcountry hubs. If you want to fly from Chicago to Burlington, Vt., or from San Francisco to Albuquerque, you have to use the main airport.
But where you can find a flight-at a good schedule and a good fare-using a second-tier airport often can reduce the hassle and stress.
