Cheap, and close. Those are a couple of Houston Hobby Airport’s features. Located ten miles from downtown (closer if your destination is the medical center) HOU is home, in this part of Texas, to a slew of discount airlines: Southwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and ATA among them.
This aggregation of discount muscle has rendered Hobby a place where the average passenger pays up to $100 less than the national average for an airline ticket. This is according to United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ Air Travel Price Index.
On average, fliers using Houston Hobby paid about $277.46 per ticket during the fourth quarter of 2006. The national average was $378.
Southwest is a major driver down here. The Dallas-based carrier makes it a point of setting up shop at so-called “alternative” airports, close-in fields such as Houston Hobby, Dallas Love Field (DAL), and Chicago Midway (MDW).
Operating out of smaller airports cuts the airline’s ground turnaround times. Less taxiing. It’s also a boon for cost-conscious fliers in search of a complete cheap travel package: cheap flights, and (comparatively) cheap ground transportation.
Larger airports are often on the periphery of cities, such as Bush Houston Intercontinental (23 miles as opposed to Hobby’s ten), or Dallas/Fort Worth (15 miles from Dallas, as opposed to Love Field’s four).
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
