The experience of anyone who has traveled by air lately is that commercial flying is enjoying a tremendous rebound from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the numbers confirm that.
So at IllinoisBet.com, we paused our Illinois sports betting coverage to delve into the topic further.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that passengers for December 2022 were 74.9 million, not far off the pre-pandemic December 2019 figure of 79.5 million passengers.
Meanwhile, air travelers have seen airfares increase, and more recently decrease. Customer demand and fuel prices have been among the factors contributing to the volatility of air travel costs.
Using data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, IlinoisBet.com ranked the states and the District of Columbia based on approximate average domestic airline itinerary fares by origin city for 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. The Bureau of Transportation’s airfares are reported based on individual cities, and obviously the cities within a given state are of varying sizes. We averaged the fares by city, then arranged them by state, to arrive at our numbers.
Given those parameters, IllinoisBet.com – your source for Illinois sportsbook promos – calculated that Illinois was ranked No. 13 in lowest airfare among the 50 states and D.C., for the span we examined. Illinois’ average fare was $394.24 over all of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 (January through March).
The state with the lowest approximate average airfare for the period measured was Delaware. The lone airport in the state that is measured by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics is in Wilmington, where the average fare was $139.25.
The most expensive state was the one with the most-far flung airports compared to most of America – that’s Alaska, with an approximate average rate of $655.85 per flight per city measured.
The BTS website included 12 cities in Illinois for the purpose of airfare statistics. They are, in order of 2022 passenger volume: Chicago-O’Hare (airport code ORD), Chicago-Midway (MDW), Peoria (PIA), Molne (MLI). Belleville (BLV), Bloomington/Normal (BMI), Rockford (RFD), Springfield (SPI), Champaign/Urbana (CMI), Decatur (DEC), Marion/Herrin (MWA), and Quincy (UIN).
O’Hare had the second-highest passenger volume in the country in 2022, according to the official stats, behind only LAX in Los Angeles.
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Author
Bill Ordine covers state gambling issues for IllinoisBet.com. He was a reporter and editor in news and sports for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Baltimore Sun for 25 years, and was a lead reporter on a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News. Bill started reporting on casinos and gaming shortly after Atlantic City’s first gambling halls opened and wrote a syndicated column on travel to casino destinations for 10 years.
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