TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Fare Better South Of The Border
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Published: March 13, 2008
TAMPA - When Kimberly Hartley wanted to fly between Toronto and Tampa to attend a conference here in January, the best round-trip airfare she could find cost $1,185 on Air Canada.
Then, Hartley researched fares between Buffalo and Tampa and found one for $475 on Southwest Airlines.
So Hartley did what an increasing number of U.S. and Canadian travelers are doing. She bypassed the steep charges that the Canadian government adds to flights using Canadian airports.
The Oakville, Ontario, businesswoman drove a little more than an hour to one of a handful of U.S. airports along the U.S.-Canadian border. They parlay their location and low-cost airline service into alternatives to flying directly to Montreal and Toronto. The huge business and leisure travel segments between Florida and Canada benefit.
Airports in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, N.Y., have emerged as gateways to the burgeoning Toronto-Hamilton, Ontario, corridor, while airports in Burlington, Vt., and Plattsburgh, N.Y., are marketing themselves as alternatives to flying into Montreal.
Canadian aviation officials have noticed the same trend to a lesser extent in Bellingham, Wash., with a small number of flights and lower fares that appeal to some who travel to the Vancouver area on Canada's western coast.
As much as 30 percent of Burlington International Airport's passengers involve Canadian traffic, officials report. A January survey of license tags on vehicles parked at Buffalo Niagara International Airport showed that 37 percent of the passengers were from Canada. An additional, untold number of passengers whose journeys originated in the United States fly into Buffalo and continue across the border by car, airport officials said.
There's a trade-off between time and expense spent on the highway for the difference in airfares to U.S. and Canadian airports. Montreal is about 60 miles from Plattsburgh and 95 miles from Burlington, while Toronto is about 100 miles from the Buffalo airport and 90 miles from Niagara Falls.
Families Can Save A Lot
But the cost savings can mount, especially for parties larger than a single traveler.
"It is not unusual for families to save $800 or more on tickets to or from places like Tampa," said C. Douglas Hartmayer, director of public relations for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which oversees the Buffalo and Niagara Falls airports.
The savings also matter to business travelers like Hartley.
"Should I pay more for a little more convenience," said Hartley, a Pinellas County tourism consultant who lives 30 miles west of Toronto in Oakville, Ontario, "or should I take an easy drive and get a less expensive fare?"
Hartley stays attuned to travel expenses both for her tourism consulting business and to track the best way to market Pinellas County to Canadian visitors, more than 338,000 of whom visited Pinellas in 2007.
High Canadian airfares largely result from government fees generally hidden from consumers scanning a breakdown of the costs of a flight. A Canadian flight will include in its base price - before various aviation and security fees are listed - the Canadian fuel excise tax and rents that airports must pay their Canadian government owners.
United States Creates Competition
The higher Canadian airfares have been a fact of life for years. What's relatively new is U.S. airports that successfully recruited low-cost carriers that create competition and lowered fares into places like Buffalo and Burlington.
"The Buffalo-Tampa route has been strong for Southwest Airlines," said Tampa International director Louis Miller. In addition to Southwest's nonstop service, more than a half-dozen other airlines serve the route with connecting or direct flights with an intermediary stop.
Niagara Falls International Airport added commercial service including Myrtle Beach Direct Air. Last year the low-cost carrier began serving St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport with three weekly flights. Those have been well received, said Jeff Clauss, director of air service development at the Pinellas airport. St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport also hosts seasonal nonstop scheduled charter flights to a handful of Canadian destinations.
The picture is similar in the Montreal area, where a handful of airlines provide connecting flights between Burlington and Tampa.
Plattsburgh International also picked up Myrtle Beach Direct, which will inaugurate connecting flights twice weekly to St. Petersburg-Clearwater International on Saturday. The Plattsburgh airport markets itself as "l'aeroport americain de Montreal" in Canada - Montreal's U.S. airport. The Buffalo airport purchases radio and print advertising in Toronto to market its flights, while Canadian TV viewers get the nearby U.S. channels that carry ads for airlines like Southwest.
Canadian-based Air Canada and WestJet, both of which provide service at Tampa International, frequently offer fares to Canadian destinations that are as low or lower than competing U.S. airlines. But none of the airlines can offer Canadian flights to compete with fares at U.S. border airports because the Canadian government assesses airports millions of dollars in annual rents.
"Plus, Canadian airports are given unfettered, unchecked monopoly pricing and carriers cannot in any effective manner question them," said Fred Gaspar, vice president, policy and strategic planning for the Air Transport Association of Canada, based in Ottawa.
"From a passenger's perspective, it is very difficult for the average consumer to digest. We continue to raise the issue, but it has not reached street level political discussion."
Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at tjackovics@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7817.
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