Avoid travel troubles with alternate airports

(CNN) -- It used to be one of the best-kept travel secrets: Use an alternate airport and save money, time and headaches.

Jim Mayo, a sales manager from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, thinks nothing of driving two hours south to use Baltimore/Washington International Airport, where he says fares are "dramatically lower" than in Philadelphia.

Carolyn Waterman, an Oklahoma City college professor, prefers flying to Ontario International Airport near San Bernardino, California, over Los Angeles International Airport, even though drive times back to LA can be excruciatingly long in traffic.

"It is convenient, friendly, and all areas are easily accessible," she says.

Marjory Hawkins of Orinda, California, goes out of her way to use Oakland International Airport instead of San Francisco International Airport -- even if it means changing planes more often.

"Please don't tell anyone how wonderful alternative airports are," the communications consultant implores. "Then they will become as overcrowded and frustrating as the larger airports."

The secret's out

Too late. The secret's out, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

A look at the number of passengers who boarded planes from 1991 through 1998 reveals that growth at alternate airports has outpaced the growth of the airports they sought to relieve.

For example, Chicago's Midway Airport grew 28 percent more during the seven-year period than O'Hare. Orange County's John Wayne Airport expanded 11 percent more than LAX during that time, and growth at Dallas Love Field outdid Dallas/Fort Worth's by 3 percent.

Now the alternates are themselves getting alternate airports. In Southern California, there's a proposal to convert the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into an airport to relieve John Wayne Airport. In Chicago's south suburbs, they're lobbying to build a third airport in Peotone, arguing that Midway is now "at capacity."

"The alternate airports have grown faster, making it necessary to open new ones," says Linda Greene, a spokeswoman for the Airports Council International, an association of airports based in Washington.

But not all of the alternates to the alternates are completely new, she notes. As many of the B-list airports reach capacity, regional airfields are being expanded into national airports. A number of obscure airfields, such as New York's Stewart International Airport (a likely replacement to overcrowded Newark) are waiting for their ship, or plane, to come in.

Others, like Long Island's MacArthur Airport, which Southwest Airlines decided to use to enter the New York market in March 1999, have already arrived.

Still a good deal

Confused yet? Well, before canceling that flight you were going to take out of Fort Lauderdale, listen to Henry Harteveldt, a senior travel analyst for Forrester Research.

The alternates -- flawed and crowded as they may be -- often remain a "good deal," he says. "Generally, you get better on-time performance at that airport. The fares are sometimes lower. The airline staff is often nicer. Parking is easier, and baggage delivery can be faster."

That's still the experience of most travelers, even if the numbers suggest it may be about to change.

Kitty Werner, a Waitsfield, Vermont, writer, still checks out the alternates first when she travels.

"When my daughter and I went to my mother's wedding last December in Washington, we booked flights from Manchester to Baltimore for $88.50 each for a three-day advance purchase," says the former travel agent. "If we had flown from Burlington, Vermont, to Washington National, it would have cost us $358 each with three weeks advance purchase -- and over $550 with no advance purchase."

Will alternate airports become victims of their own popularity, prompting some travelers to turn to the alternate-alternate airports as their embarkation points of choice?

Years could pass before that time, when alternate airports are as unusable as the airports they originally replaced.

I won't panic until I see a Coming Soon: International Airport sign across my driveway.

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