With average airfares of $425, Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) was the second most expensive airport in the US in a 2019 study, coming in just behind Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). By contrast, Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas was the cheapest, with average airfares of around $300.
The airport is a major hub for American Airlines, and primarily serves destinations across the US, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Year-round long-haul services are limited to Munich (MUC) from Lufthansa, and Munich, and Frankfurt (FRA), and a now three times daily flight to London Heathrow (LHR) from American Airlines. The oneworld carrier also operates summer seasonal flights to Dublin (DUB), Paris (CDG), and Rome (FCO).
Like many airports across the world, Charlotte Douglas International Airport has experienced a boom following the pandemic, and in 2021, it was the sixth-busiest airport in the US, with more than 20 million passengers.
This put it ahead of several major international hubs, including New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), with 15 million passengers, and Miami International Airport (MIA), with 17 million. However, by 2023, the airport had fallen to ninth place, although it still saw an impressive 53 million passengers.
From a lack of competition to ongoing terminal expansion work, what are some of the reasons for it being so expensive for passengers to fly out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport?
5. A high proportion of business travel
North Carolina is home to large international banking and technology corporations, which regularly send their employees overseas. Business travelers often travel at the last minute, and are not as price-sensitive as leisure travelers, so they are willing to pay a premium for the flexibility offered by a hub carrier.
Photo: Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock
Businesses also tend to have corporate contracts with airlines and make use of frequent flyer benefits, benefitting Charlotte Douglas International Airport’s major hub carrier, American Airlines. This can, however, leave leisure travelers feeling left out, although money can often be saved by taking cheaper, indirect routes.
4. Significant increase in demand
In a post-pandemic world, travelers are making up for lost time, and demand for air travel has boomed. According to data from Airlines for America and reported by Axios, airfares nationwide have gone up a staggering 28.1% in the past year alone.
With passengers willing to pay a premium, there is little incentive for airlines to lower prices. This is a phenomenon that has been seen across the world, not only in the US, and not only at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, but with airfares already higher than average, this pushes the North Carolina airport’s fares even higher.
3. American Airlines’ monopoly
Charlotte Douglas International Airport is American Airlines’ second-largest hub, after Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The carrier operates around 92% of the airport’s 700 daily flights, giving it a clear monopoly on services.
Photo: Grek K__ca | Shutterstock
American Airlines’ presence at the airport grew to such a scale thanks to historic merges and takeovers. It began in 1979 when Piedmont Airlines opened its Charlotte hub.
Piedmont Airlines later became USAir (later known as US Airways), which finally merged with American Airlines in 2015, creating the world’s largest airline by passengers carried. The modern-day reincarnation of Piedmont Airlines operates regional flights on behalf of American Eagle, using its fleet of Embraer ERJ145 aircraft, while data from ch-aviation puts American Airlines’ current fleet at a staggering 1,001 aircraft.
This means that today, American Airlines faces little competition at the airport, and even the country’s other major carriers, such as Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, only operate a handful of routes between them.
2. Lack of low-cost carriers
While Charlotte Douglas International Airport does see a limited number of flights from Southwest Airlines and Spirit Airlines, there is no major low-cost carrier presence at the airport, which again creates little incentive for legacy carriers such as American Airlines to keep prices down.
Photo: Markus Mainka / Shutterstock
North Carolina’s second-largest airport, Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), however, does play host to a greater variety of airlines that provide options for more cost-sensitive passengers, including Avelo Airlines and Frontier Airlines.
1. Major terminal expansion works
The airport is currently undergoing a major terminal expansion project, with the works set to cost an estimated $600 million. That money, of course, has to come from somewhere, and is normally passed on to airlines, and therefore passengers, in the form of per-passenger charges. At Charlotte Douglas International Airport, these average around $2.50 to $3 per passenger.
The project will take approximately five years to complete, and will double the size of the terminal, adding 175,000 square feet of usable space and renovating the other 191,000 square feet. Among the new additions is also an aircraft viewing point, which opened in June 2024. Jack Christine, the airport’s Chief Operating Officer, explained the logic behind the seemingly never-ending building works, saying,
“It’s easy to see, when you look around, that we have a lot of demand. We have lots of passengers, and we have lots of aircraft in and out of here. As long as we continue to have that demand, we will continue to build. It’s a good problem to have. But it does mean that we’re always going to be building stuff.”
Multiple factors have led to Charlotte Douglas International Airport having the second-highest airfares in the country. That said, not everything at the airport is expensive – car parking, for example, comes in significantly cheaper than at Chicago O’Hare (ORD) or Los Angeles (LAX).
Source: Simple Flying
