Want Cheap Airfare To/From Washington D.C.? Fly BWI!
Written: Jul 30 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: CHEAP airfares
Cons: Construction rubble
The Bottom Line: The ONLY choice for Baltimore, and simply put, the BEST airport choice for bargain hunting travelers in the Washington D.C. area.
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Baltimore Washington International Airport |
Washingtonians are spoiled. They've got three excellent airports serving the region, and for air travelers, that kind of competition spells opportunity for cheap travel. I often call myself "The World's Cheapest Traveler(tm)", and in true cheap fashion I like to be aware of ways to save money on every trip I take.
I consider the Washington D.C. area to be my home even though I've been living in Texas for several years. Much of my family and many long-time friends still live in the D.C. area, so I find myself traveling to and from the area at least a couple times every year, so I have a vested interest in keeping an eye on travel bargains to the region. When a deal that's too good to pass up comes along, I don't pass it up.
One of the biggest keys to saving money on travel is to be flexible. To me, that means being willing to fly into any of the area's three major airports: National (DCA), Dulles (IAD), or Baltimore-Washington (BWI). Each airport has its pros and cons.
All things being equal ("all things" being defined as price, price, and price), I always prefer flying through National Airport, which is a sophisticated, attractive, and super convenient airport. Unfortunately, all things are rarely equal, and so I have to go to plan B, which is to consider flying through Dulles or Baltimore-Washington. Between the two, I find BWI to be slightly better in terms of facilities and dramatically better in terms of opportunities to save big buck$. Let me explain...
Airfares to Washington...
Nowadays, everybody in the world knows to use internet search engines to price airfare. Unfortunately, using most of the major booking engines (like Travelocity or Expedia), it's hard to spot the often dramatic savings potential of simply switching to an alternative airport.
Washingtonians are indeed fortunate. Not only do they have three convenient airports, they have a great source of information for tracking and spotting the savings potential of using a different airport. The Washington Post regularly tracks prices to 20 different U.S. destinations. At a glance, you can see whether you save enough by switching airports to be worth the possibly longer drive time. The charts are online at www.washingtonpost.com (from the nav panel on the left, click Travel, then look for the heading for Web Airfare Specials). The charts are updated daily. What a GREAT resource for the bargain traveler!!!
I've been keeping an eye on these for the last few weeks and what's become incredibly clear to me is this: Flying through BWI is cheapest more than 70 percent of the time!! That's not a historic reference point either, that's based on tracking the prices over June and July 2003. We're talking how to save money now!
As I write this review (July 30), I see from today's list that BWI offers the lowest fare in 14 out of 20 cases (70 percent). That's about par for the course over the last two months, during which I've seen that number dip to 12 out of 20 (60 percent) and I've seen it as high as 16 out of 20 (80 percent).
The actual savings per itinerary by flying out of BWI range from a low of just $10 (to Chicago) to as much as $210 (to Honolulu). Today's average price per ticket through BWI is $71 lower than through DCA or IAD. This too, is about normal judging from prices over the last two months. There will, of course, be some itineraries that are just as cheap through DCA or IAD as through BWI, and there are a couple where those airports beat BWI, but in general (70 percent of the time), you will save money (as much as 50 percent savings if you're going to Boston or Cleveland) by flying through BWI.
You can take my word for it, or you can look up the fares yourself and do the math yourself -- go ahead, I don't mind the sanity check, especially if you pass along some info that would help me save some money.
Why the savings? Well, part of it is the presence in BWI of low-cost carriers, especially Southwest and AirTran. However, this comparison really reflects only that influence and is not a true representation of how low the fares can go at BWI. In reality, your potential to save money is even greater than I'm stating here because the Washington Post comparison excludes Southwest. Southwest has a reputation for aggressive pricing, and it is extremely likely that some of the BWI fares shown in the Post's list will be beaten when you price tickets through Southwest.
It's also important to note that the potential to save money on international travel by flying BWI is just as huge. The reason I say that is because Icelandair flies from BWI to several European destinations, and they routinely undercut all of the European flag carriers that fly into Dulles. During the summer months, the savings are less dramatic, but in the off season the savings become significant with the cost of flying to Amsterdam or London on Icelandair being cheaper than flying to Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Icelandair has had great fares through BWI every off season for the past decade, there's no reason to think the savings won't be there again in a couple months...
Bottom line: The potential to save money by flying into BWI is HUGE, and if anything, is understated by the comparisons that the Washington Post publishes each day. Cheap travelers need to consider BWI.
Any equation on the value proposition has to consider quality too, and in that regard I find that BWI is quite competitive with the other two airports. I tend to like the facilities at National better, and I far prefer their easy access via Metro, but I tend to prefer BWI slightly over Dulles for other reasons. But I'll get to that in a sec...first let's chat airports.
About BWI...
BWI was known, up until the 1970s, as Friendship Airport, and it was never pitched as an alternative to Washington area airports -- it was purely Baltimore's airport. With the growth of Dulles though, it became apparent that BWI was in just as good a position to serve D.C. as was Dulles, mostly because of its location right on the two major highways that run directly between Baltimore and Washington. The airport has undergone expansions since the 1970s, and the current round of expansions is adding international gates, expanding concourses A and B to add more domestic gates, adding people movers, expanding parking lots, and of course, inconviencing travelers in the near term. (In fact, Pier A is currently closed for renovation).
Airport Facilities....
BWI is served by all of the major U.S. carriers (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, US Airways) plus a handful of international carriers (Icelandair, Air Jamaica, British Airways, Aer Lingus, et al.), but most significantly to cheap travelers, it's also become the de facto bargain capital of the capital region with a big presence by both Southwest and AirTran. In fact, Southwest alone accounts for 44 percent of the airport's total traffic.
BWI is a pretty big airport, and most importantly to me, it's designed intelligently with an obvious eye towards passenger usability. There are no extremely long walks between terminals because the airport is arranged on an arc shape with long piers (called concourses) jutting out like spokes from a center hub. The gates are along these piers. From an ergonomic perspective, this is the most efficient design possible if you want to minimize walking distances. It doesn't take too many trips in which you go through badly designed airports before you start appreciating the fundamental beauty of an airport that's designed in such a way that form follows function. The only downside I see to BWI's architecture is that they're seriously pushing the limits of usability with the long Pier D -- in fact, it would be nice if they could think about expanding piers A and E and reduce the size of Pier D, but I'm sure exercises in human factors are not their number 1 criterion.
To see why human factors matter in airport design, you don't have to take too many trips through badly designed airports. In my case, it really only took a couple trips in which I used Dulles instead of BWI for me to appreciate how good BWI really is -- Dulles has a completely and utterly horrible design with some extremely long walkways and a terribly implemented "midfield terminal" that's inconvenient to use and a real annoyance to the frequent traveler. The only good thing about Dulles is that you can get a tasty glass of Dominion Lager at their taproom -- and that's almost worth the hassle factor...but not quite because BWI has a brewpub of its own (the Fells Point Brewpub) onsite, though it's got a somewhat inconvenient location out on the end of Pier B.
One thing I really like about BWI is their observation gallery, which strikes me as a pretty kid friendly kind of place. Watching planes take off and land is really a pretty wonderful thing, and I like airports that encourage it by providing inviting places to sit and watch in comfortable surroundings with good view lines.
I'm not a big fan of shopping in airports, so I won't dwell on the stores. BWI has 'em, so does every other airport. Probably the same shops too. Most are forgettable places selling the same stuff you could buy in the mall near your house, but at prices that are easily twice what the things are worth.
Ditto with the food. Most of it is forgettable, and far too much of it is greasy fast food from places like Burger King and Taco Bell. Sure, some people probably like that stuff (especially bargain hunters), but I'd really like to see better food in the airport.
Official information about the airport is online at: www.bwiairport.com
Accessibility...
No two ways about it, National Airport is easily the most convenient airport in the region. The simple geography of it being located just across the river from downtown Washington guarantees its shoe-in for the "most convenient" title. If that weren't enough though, the fact that there is a Metro subway station at the airport means that you've got instant accessibility to much of the area, with easy connections to public buses, or to rail lines (Amtrak, Metro, VRE) via the Union Station stop.
But BWI is no slouch for accessibility either. It's got easy access to two major highways (I-95 and the B-W Parkway), plus there is a rail station near BWI (with free shuttle buses) with service by both Amtrak (www.amtrak.com) and MARC trains (www.mtamaryland.com -- note, BWI is on the Penn Line).
Parking is fairly good at BWI, though no matter how big they make the lots (the long-term parking lot has over 10,000 spaces), there never seem to be enough spots, nor do the shuttle buses ever seem to run often enough. I do wish the long-term rate of $7/day were less, but that's in line with what I pay at airports in Houston.
I've often heard people say that Dulles is easier to get to than BWI. This is utter nonsense.
Of course Dulles is closer if you happen to live in Fairfax, just as BWI is closer if you live in Silver Spring, but for much of the region, the two airports are essentially equal in terms of drive time and distance. And that is NOT my personal opinion, it is a FACT that you can easily verify for yourself. Here's how I came up with these numbers...
I went to Yahoo maps (maps.yahoo.com). To verify relative distances, I chose to use what L'Enfant used when he architected the city -- Capitol Hill -- as my center point. So I plug in 100 North Capitol Street (which should be either the garden next to the Capitol or maybe Union Station across the street) and then I plugged in BWI as the destination. Result: 30.7 miles, 39 minutes driving time. I then did the same, plugging in IAD as the destination. Result: 27.5 miles, 34 minutes driving time. A 5 minute difference from Capitol Hill -- pretty inconsequential if you're saving $70, isn't it?
Bottom Line
BWI is a good, very modern airport. It's big, and it serves about 20 million passengers per year. While it's super convenient to downtown Baltimore, it's also just as convenient to much of the Washington D.C. area as is Dulles airport, but the number one reason to prefer BWI over National or Dulles is because it can save you money. That's the advice from "The World's Cheapest Traveler(tm)" who returns you now to your regularly scheduled program...
Until next time, see you on the road. As always, I'll be the guy sitting in the cheap seat, which often means I'm traveling via BWI airport...
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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