Travel is expensive, particularly if you're going international. But even if you're staying in your home country, you still encounter a seemingly endless array of costs and fees. So, the name of the game is finding ways to cut costs without sacrificing the quality of your trip. As it turns out, there's actually a fairly simple way to save money when planning your next adventure if you're in the United States. And the government is the one helping you do it.
The Department of Transportation regularly conducts research on the travel costs, which makes sense since that's part of their job. These includes monitoring, ranking, and reporting on the costs of each airport in the US based on average ticket price. The most recent report was issued in January 2025 and covered the third quarter of 2024. Naturally, there will have been some fluctuations since then. At the same time, the data is still exceedingly relevant.
What's interesting about the report is that it shows how changing airports can actually save you money. Larger or more remote airports had higher average ticket prices while smaller, less popular airports had lower tickets prices. That's not a shock, though the difference in price is. Orlando International Airport had an average round-trip ticket price of $269.61 while nearby Sanford International Airport had an average price of $116.79.
Where and when you're traveling will of course also impact that cost. Still, this demonstrates that it does pay to shop around if you have multiple possible departure points. The January 2025 report listed the cheapest airport in the US as Branson, MO with an average ticket price of $90.76. The most expensive was Guam with an average air fare of $1,658.81.