CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — If you’re someone who “scours the travel websites” when looking for the lowest airfare out of the region: Where do you usually fly out of? Cedar Rapids? Moline? The competition is intense between these airports for the hundreds of thousands of passengers that come through.

Is there a perception that Cedar Rapids is more expensive to fly out of than Moline? Even The Eastern Iowa Airport director says this is true. With AirTran leaving Moline, higher prices could put both airports on more even footing.

“We have twelve years of perception we have to educate people about,” said Tim Bradshaw, the director of The Eastern Iowa Airport. Bradshaw came to Cedar Rapids from Louisville, Kentucky in 2010 and is working to keep the airport competitive on price, even as plenty of fliers drive past The Eastern Iowa Airport on their way to other airports. “We have some leakage to Moline or Chicago. Some people will even drive to Chicago to get a good fare.”

In the airport business, leaders count the number of “enplanements”, the industry term of departing passengers. Bradshaw said The Eastern Iowa Airport has 427,000 enplanements during 2011. “Airlines will charge what the market will bear,” said Bradshaw. “They look at travel patterns, the business makeup of the community and whatever the market is. Regardless of whatever we charge in rents of landing fees, the airlines will charge what the market will pay.”

Bradshaw said the market is “very solid”, especially for business passengers, the fliers who, typically, are charged higher fares than leisure travelers. For example, the price for a Tuesday departure and a Thursday return is usually higher than for a passenger who will not return for five days or more. Bradshaw said The Eastern Iowa Airport passenger makeup is about 60% business travelers and 40% leisure travelers. For those traveling for work, Bradshaw said time saved can translate to money. “Take a business person who makes $100 or $200 an hour, they can’t spend a lot of windshield time driving to another airport,” Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw agreed with the notion that airfares are full of “magic and mystery”. “The fares change all the time,” said Bradshaw. “You could look at a fare in the morning and it will be gone in the afternoon. They’re (The airlines) looking at fares six months out from now. They try to maximize the business travelers on those aircraft.”

Bradshaw said the flights out of Cedar Rapids are running at about 80% capacity, much higher than in previous decades.

As for the price comparison between The Eastern Iowa Airport and other airports, he said the gap is closing since AirTran left Moline in November 2011. “People mistakenly think they’ll see one fare that’s higher (at Cedar Rapids) and assume that we’re higher on all and that’s not the case.”

As for how much higher a fare would have to be for a person to drive past their home airport for another, Bradshaw said “it’s usually the $100 mark”. He said a recent search of common destinations between Cedar Rapids and Moline and a flight out of Cedar Rapids is about $30 more expensive than flying out of Moline.

Bradshaw’s perception battle could be getting some help. On February 9th, The Eastern Iowa Airport announced that Frontier Airlines would offer service to Denver as a low-cost carrier.

“Our growth was in getting people from Linn County, Johnson County, Dubuque and Burlington to come on over,” said Quad City International Airport Aviation Director Bruce Carter. Carter, who has also serves as the airport director at the Waterloo Regional Airport. He points to the advertising push seen in some pockets of Eastern Iowa. “Go to any Iowa sporting event and you’ll see Quad Cities sponsoring instantly replay,” said Carter. “If you look at our last five years of marketing, our target market is Linn County and Johnson County.”

With years of service from low-cost carrier AirTran, Moline did benefit from the reality of having lower fares for popular destinations. AirTran’s pullout three months ago means fewer passengers. Carter said AirTran was good for “350 seats” each day and that the enplanements for 2011 were down 12%. According to Carter, Moline had 425,000 enplanements in 2011, 2,000 fewer than Cedar Rapids. Carter added, “With AirTran losing those seats, that hurt us quite a bit.”

Carter’s staff ran a price comparison between Moline and Cedar Rapids for 25 different destinations for us in early February. Moline had the lower fare for 20 of the 25 flights on this particular day.

The ability to pull in fliers from Cedar Rapids or Iowa City is apparent just driving around the Moline parking lot. Iowa plates with the words ‘LINN’ and ‘JOHNSON’ at the bottom dot the long-term lot, along with the usual ‘SCOTT’ (Davenport, Bettendorf) plates. When AirTran was at its apex in Moline, the report shows up to 20% of the vehicles in the airport’s parking lots were from Linn or Johnson Counties.


PARKING BREAKDOWN

We counted the counties for 1,700 vehicles in the CID parking on Wednesday, February 8th. This does not count the “drop-off” passengers. The idea was just to obtain an idea of where The Eastern Iowa Airport passengers come from:

Linn: 528 (31%)
Johnson: 415 (26%)
Black Hawk: 217 (14%)
Dubuque: 48 (3.1%)
Benton: 37 (2.1%)
Buchanan: 30 (1.8%)
Non-Iowa: 68 (4%)

The Airfares Themselves:

More proof that prices for airfares are often moving. We have tracked specific routes for this story over different days. These are round-trip fares through a search of the travel website Orbitz. We picked a April 16 departure and April 22:

Destination: LOS ANGELES (Price Checks on 1/27, 2/11, 2/17, 2/21)
Cedar Rapids-LAX: $512/$507/$371/$313
Moline-LAX: $523/$480/$518/$527
Des Moines-LAX: $331/$326/$322/$310

Destination: PHOENIX (Price Checks on 1/27, 2/11, 2/17, 2/21)
Cedar Rapids: $253/$253/$253/$231*
Moline: $243/$243/$243/$260*
Des Moines: $320/$350/$350/$335

Destination: DALLAS/FT. WORTH (Price Checks on 1/27, 2/11, 2/17, 2/21)
Cedar Rapids: $313/$301/$359/$275
Moline: $199/$421/$281/$277
Des Moines: $311/$248/$357/$355

Destination: TAMPA/ST. PETE (Price Checks on 1/27, 2/11, 2/17, 2/21)
Cedar Rapids: $240/$240/$240/$240*
Moline: $222/$243/$222/$222*
Des Moines: $249/$292/$292/$292*

DESTINATION: MIAMI (Price Checks on 1/27, 2/11, 2/17, 2/21)
Cedar Rapids: $539/$511/$549/$549
Moline: $395/$397/$405/$417
Des Moines: $388/$433/$433/$434
*Represents a “low-cost” carrier, such as Alliegant or Frontier.

Another add-on for considering the total cost is transportation. Let’s say you live in Cedar Rapids and plan to be on vacation for a week. Assuming your vehicle runs at 25 MPG, gas is $4/gallon and parking is $30/week.

To drive and park at the following airports, add the following to your budget plan:

Cedar Rapids: Add $35
Moline: Add $70
Des Moines: Add $90