How Much Does a US Domestic Flight Cost? Ticket and Per-Direction Airfares, Fares by State, Airport and Airline, and the Taxes and Fees on Top, from BTS Fare Data, 1993–2026

Two official averages describe the price of a US domestic flight, and they answer different questions. Using Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) fare releases and series, we report both. Counting a round trip as one ticket, the average domestic fare was USD 387 in 2025 and USD 436.36 in the second quarter of 2026, the highest second quarter on record; round trips averaged USD 493 and one-way tickets USD 283 in 2025. Counting each direction of travel as one fare, the average rose 47.8% in current dollars from USD 180 in 1993 to USD 266 in the first quarter of 2026, but fell 13.2% in constant first-quarter 2026 dollars, and the real price of a passenger-mile fell from 30.14 to 22.21 cents, about 26%. In the second quarter of 2026, simple averages of airport fares ranged from USD 200.85 (Delaware) to USD 617.14 (Wyoming) across the 50 states, and from USD 319.30 (San Juan) to USD 531.83 (Charlotte) among the 50 busiest airports. Among the nine largest airlines, the first-quarter 2026 per-direction fare ranged from USD 98 (Spirit) to USD 339 (Delta), a ratio of 3.46, and the gap between network and low-cost carriers widened between 2010 and 2025. In a worked example, federal taxes and fees of USD 74.79 were 18.7% of a USD 400 ticket, and airlines collected USD 7.4 billion in checked-bag fees in 2025. The average 2025 ticket took 32.1% of median weekly earnings. All inputs are public.