South Florida’s Connected Airports
December 10th, 2009 Posted in Cheap Latin America Travel, Cheap North America Travel, General, Travel bargains, Travel industry
The guy who wrote the seminal creativity book A Whack on the Side of the Head had one great piece of advice I try to apply to every problem situation: “Look for the second right answer.”
“What’s that have to do with airports?” you may ask.
Well in southern Florida, the second right answer may just save you a hundred dollars or more. There are three sizable airports in that region: the big kahuna one in Miami, plus smaller ones in Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The first one is where most of the international flights leave out of, but bargain carrier Spirit Air has its hub in Ft. Lauderdale and they serve lots of cheap international destinations in the Americas. That includes flights to Nicaragua, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Honduras–routinely under $100 one-way when there’s a sale going on.
Southwest, the best airline in the U.S. for domestic flights, flies into both Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
The cool thing about all this is that the three airports are connected by the nice Tri-Rail system. Last month I had a flight into Miami on American and then a flight out of Ft. Lauderdale on Spirit. A $5 train ticket took me from one airport to the other in comfort. OK, I did have to get on a shuttle bus to get from the terminal to the train station, but it’s a short hop and free. You can buy the ticket from a kiosk with cash or a credit card and the absolute highest fare is $6.90.
Three airports, public transportation between them, and two budget airlines serving the market. If only we had it this good in the rest of the country. Find links to all the other airports here or check this airport transport directory to see if you can get to another airport by public transportation.
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3 Responses to “South Florida’s Connected Airports”
By Marie Javins on Dec 10, 2009
Thanks! What an incredibly useful snippet of information.
By brian on Dec 11, 2009
Never knew that! Miami is a big hub to the Caribbean and South America, so if you can get a cheap flight from any of the other two airports and then connect to MIA, you could save a good amount of money.
By Megan on Dec 12, 2009
There is one big error in that map picture–the miami metro system does NOT actually go to the airport. That’s just a dream they’ve been talking about for ten years. In reality it’s a 1 hour bus ride to downtown and 1.5 to South Beach. The trirail between airports is laudable, the rest of the public transit situation in South Florida is laughable.