When the pandemic started to wane, people began traveling a LOT. “Revenge travel” was the name of the game, and supply was way surpassed by demand. That meant airline prices were sky high.
Travel is most definitely still “a thing.” But “revenge travel” has calmed down, and there are other things on Americans’ minds. So they’re traveling less, which, in turn, makes for lower prices. In fact, according to Hopper, as air traffic returned to the levels of 2019, the price of domestic flights fell an average of 8% in 2024.
That being said, certain airlines, as well as certain airports cost more, or less, than others. The timing of your flight, say, during the holiday season (or if you’re trying to get a flight to Rome RIGHT NOW) will naturally cost more than if you try to travel during a slower time of year.
CashNetUSA, an online lender that offers various types of loans in 29 states decided to see what airlines were the most affordable, depending on location.
How they did it
CashNetUSA analyzed flights from every major U.S. airport. They then ranked airlines by cost to determine the cheapest and most expensive options at each hub.
To keep everything equal, their team analyzed one-way economy fares that had no more than one stop. They calculated the average cost per mile for each airline at every airport, and then ranked them by affordability. And then they turned their findings into an interactive tool so readers could compare airline fares of whichever airport was near them (or that they simply wanted to look up).
Their methodology
From CashNetUSA:
We built a seed list of all officially designated hub (major) airports in America as defined by the Federal Aviation Administration. We then used airmilescalculator.com to create flight route combinations from each airport to all other airports and calculate distances between airports.
Next, we used the ‘Flights’ section of Tripadvisor to collect a sample of one-way flights for all flight routes with the following filters:
- One adult
- Economy
- One Way
- Non-stop or one-stop
For each airport, we calculated the average price per mile for each airline across all routes. To calculate the state data, we aggregated data for airports within each state. This allowed us to isolate the cheapest and most expensive airline on average for each state and airport as of November 2024.
Note: Delaware lacks a hub airport.
Key findings
From CashNetUSA:
- The cheapest airline for domestic flights from New York State is Alaska, at an average of $0.09 per mile.
- In California, the most expensive airline for domestic flights is Horizon Air, at an average of $1.20 per mile.
- The cheapest combination of airport + airline to take a domestic flight is flying Hawaiian Airlines from Kahului Airport, which costs $0.03 per mile.
- The most expensive is flying United from Tulsa International Airport which averages $2.49 per mile.
Their interactive tool
Their key findings were interesting, but the tool itself gives the most information.
How to use the tool
- Enter your airport of choice (by name, not 3-letter code) and you’ll automatically be able to see which airline gives the best rates for domestic flights.
- Click on the tabs to switch between cheapest and most expensive
- Use the arrows to sort the data
Cheapest & most expensive airline per state
CashNetUSA also made maps that showed which were the cheapest and most expensive airline for domestic flights in each state. It was interesting how the names of the same airlines, on both charts, kept popping up.
Cheapest
Frontier is the cheapest airline for domestic flights in 15 states. You’d think that other ultra low-cost carriers would be well-represented too, but Spirit was only cheapest in one state, and Allegiant in just 3. However Alaska and American were the other two “winners” of being the cheapest.
Most expensive
It’s probably surprising to no one that a legacy airline was, by far, the most expensive for domestic flights. United is represented in a whopping 38 states. The second-highest was Alaska, in five states. And third, inexplicably, was Spirit.
For further information, check out this page of CashNetUSA’s blog.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.