Apr. 26 -- Dallas Love Field had the lowest average airfare of the top 100 U.S. airports during the last three months of 2006, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Wednesday.
The average domestic fare from the Dallas airport was $235.34 in the fourth quarter, compared with $379.54 for all airports and $421.09 from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
The average fare is based on information provided by U.S. airlines and includes fares for round trips or one-way travel where no return ticket is purchased.
Love Field has several factors in its favor for lower fares. Its main carrier is Southwest Airlines Co., which has a low-fare strategy, and the majority of flights from Love Field are shorter distance, which usually means a lower price.
A federal law that restricts airline flights at Love Field was modified in October to allow longer trips from the Dallas airport.
That change is likely to raise the average Love Field fare as the average trip length increases.
The most expensive airports were in Anchorage, Alaska, with an average fare of $537, followed by Cincinnati, Ohio; Honolulu; San Francisco; and New York's Kennedy International Airport.
The cheapest airports after Love Field were Chicago's Midway, with a $270.04 average fare -- about $35 more expensive than the average Love fare -- followed by Houston's Hobby Airport; Islip, N.Y.; and Buffalo, N.Y.
The federal agency said fares in the fourth quarter were up 3.4 percent from the same period of 2005.
They still trail the all-time high of $407.45 set in fourth-quarter 2000, before an economic downturn and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks caused a sharp decline in traffic and fares.
Southwest serves 16 of the 18 cheapest markets tracked by Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email , call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright 2005 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy
News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.
