Many fares at Savannah airport still reasonable, says airport director

Patrick Graham sits in his office at the Savannah International Airport.  “I’ve been in this business for 25 years and I still don’t know everything about how they figure air fares,“ he tells me.

Graham and I are talking about a report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistitics that says out of the top 100 airports, Savannah ranks third on fares.

Graham says the data collected was not used in the same way that most airports do it and that the report is just a “snapshot”, and only represents about 10 percent of the actual trips.

With that said, he acknowleges that fares can be costly, especially if you’re going to an out of the way destination.  “I think some of that is due to our loss of Air Tran,“ he says.

Air Tran, a low cost carrier, pulled out of Savannah last October.  Graham says now that the airport is without a low cost carrier, there is no competition for major airlines, especially on the route from Savannah to Atlanta.  “That’s what I hear the most complaints about, is the cost to fly from Savannah to Atlanta,“ he tells me.

Graham says they’re working to get Jet Blue, another low cost carrier, to come to Savannah.  But he says these days, many low cost carriers want a lot of financial incentives.  “We’ve offered them just about everything, except to fly the darn airplanes for them,“ he tells me.

Back to the report - it says out of the 100 busiest airports in the country, Savannah is the the third highest for fares.  It says that “average domestic itinerary fares” were $324.53 in the year 2000, but $401.73 cents by 2009.  That’s an increase of nearly 24 percent.  The report also says that out of the top ten airports, that average fares decreased in nine.  It says Savannah is the only airport that showed an increase.

Graham shows me a chart indicating that the airport’s internal figures show fares are averaging about $189 dollars.  He says lumping Savannah in with the biggest airports in the country “gets things a little skewed.  We are still a small community and only have all the air service we have because of our South Carolina neighbors.  About half of our air traffic is going to Hilton Head.“

Graham believes a more accurate picture is to consider how Savannah stacks up regionally )with airports in the same geographic location and some of similar size.)  He says out of 41 regional airports, Savannah ranks in the middle in terms of fares.  “If you look at airports all along the southeast, from Louisiana all the way up to Virginia, we rank 27th,“ he says.

I asked Graham about some fares I had checked from Savannah to Tampa, Jacksonville to Tampa and Atlanta to Tampa.  Atlanta had the lowest, then Jacksonville, followed by Savannah with the highest.  “A lot of that is just a major carrier from a large airport flying to another major carrier at another large airport,“ he says.

Considering Graham’s assertion that Savannah should be viewed in terms of regional airports, the report did include Charleston as one of the top ten airports and indicates that fares there have declined overall about 18 percent since 2000.  “Charleston still has Air Tran,“ Graham tells me.  “But they will be losing it too, as of December.“

Several passengers I talked to said they thought fares to and from Savannah were actually lower than other places.  But we received a number of email comments from locals who say they think Savannah’s fares are too costly and they told us they drive to Jacksonville’s airport instead.