Is another airport poaching your passengers? Don’t get mad — get even!

May 10, 2014

“Prairie people love to escape the winter for a while, but despite having some of the finest airport facilities in the world, thousands of folks who live in Manitoba and Saskatchewan would rather drive 3 or 4 hours to Grand Forks or Minot to make their escape,” veteran Winnipeg broadcaster Roger Currie wrote on the ChrisD.ca current affairs site on May 4.

“Airport managers in Winnipeg and Regina call it leakage, but it seems it’s becoming more of a flood is it not? In the past 12 months, close to a quarter of a million Manitobans, and a similar number from Saskatchewan, have made that long drive rather than catching a flight at home,” Currie continued, lamenting the relatively high taxes and fees levied on passengers boarding in Canada (where the air transport system largely operates on a user-pay basis, and most major airports have been long since privatized) compared to those levied on U.S. airport users (where the system is still largely government-owned and funded, although some surcharges have been added in recent years).

It’s a concern shared by the Winnipeg Airports Authority, which is lobbying the federal government for relief on rents that airports must continue to pay and on security surcharges that are paid directly by travellers. Their goal is to encourage more of those quarter-million Canadians catching their flights at nearby U.S. airports to depart from this side of the border instead.

Nevertheless, to be able to fly Allegiant Air, a U.S. low-cost low-frequency holiday airline, from Grand Forks, N.D. to Orlando, Fla. for $265.50 (U.S.) per person round-trip, or from Fargo, N.D. to Los Angeles for $322, sounds far more attractive than paying roughly $500 Cdn. to make the same round-trip from Winnipeg.

For a family of four or more, the savings to be had from driving to North Dakota to catch one of Allegiant’s flights — and of tolerating Allegiant’s tight seating and limited choice of departure and return dates — can add up to the hundreds of dollars.

But here’s where Winnipeg’s James Richardson International Airport can avenge itself: by promoting itself to North Dakotans and Minnesotans as the place to consider for a lower fare when traveling further afield or when needing a wider choice of departure and return dates.

As the table below shows, Fargo, N.D.’s Hector Field tends to be the region’s lower-fare leader for flights to various popular U.S. destinations, thanks to five-way competition between Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier and United, based on the lowest published fares listed on Google Flights* as of Friday evening, May 9 — although once in a while you might be able to get a better deal yet from the often-overlooked Bemidji Airport, where prices otherwise reflect Delta’s monopoly.

But for North Dakotans and Minnesotans going further afield, significant savings can be had by flying to and from Winnipeg, where competition for long-haul passengers is more intense. For instance, the lowest round-trip fare to London was $229 Cdn. ($210 U.S.) per person cheaper departing from Winnipeg than departing from Fargo — and that pales in comparison to the $463 Cdn. ($425 U.S.) advantage that Winnipeg had over Fargo on flights to Honolulu, and the $808 Cdn. ($741 U.S.) gap in Winnipeg’s favour on flights to Tokyo.

Still feeling over-charged for air travel? Consider this New York Times post published yesterday, noting that even despite a heavy increase in fees and a general rise in fares over the past few years, the cost of flying in the U.S. (in 2013 dollars) has fallen from an average of 31 cents per mile in 1979 to just 16 cents in 2013.

* – Tip: To search multiple airports simultaneously in Google Flights, enter the airport codes separated by commas. For example, if you’re searching for the lowest fare to Southern California in general from Winnipeg, Grand Forks or Fargo, enter YWG, GFK, FAR as your origin and LAX, SNA, ONT, LGB (and perhaps SAN, PSP, BUR or SBA) as your destination.