I just want to figure out if I am working off old information. I always thought to book a flight on an American airline you had to actually drive over the border and take a domestic flight in the US. That you cannot fly from Toronto to Orlando or Calgary to Los Angeles on United for example. The nearest airport in the United States to us here in Calgary is over 6 hours drive and we'd have to connect to get to a major center so it's pointless but I have heard of people in Vancouver driving to Seattle or Toronto driving to Buffalo and then getting much cheaper domestic flights in the U.S.
Am I off my rocker and if so are there savings I am missing out on?
Your information is not correct and as far as I know it has never been the case.
A flight from Canada to the US is an international flight. Flying out of the major Canadian airports on any airline will usually mean pre-clearing US Customs at the Canadian airport. Then, when that flight lands at its US destination city, it is treated similar to a domestic US flight in that it can arrive at a domestic terminal and there us no US Customs to go through -- it already went through it in Canada. This makes connections and such much easier, and iss particularly nice if you managed a direct flight.
There is no problem with flying a US carrier from a Canadian city to a US city, assuming there is actually a route there. What is currently NOT allowed by law is flying a US carrier from one Canadian city to another Canadian city, which is why there are no such available routes (the reverse is true too, no Canadian carrier can fly a route that is a US city to another US city). So American Airlines is allowed to fly Toronto to Orlando, but is not allowed to fly Toronto to Ottawa. And WestJet can fly Toronto to Orlando but not Orlando to Chicago. The airlines make partners with each other and codeshare flights to get passengers within a country between two internal cities.
Flying DIRECT is a whole other issue, as the direct routes between Canada and the US are seemingly few and far between and the bulk of them are from specific hub cities like Toronto. One often has to connect somewhere.
Also in recent years some of the US carriers have reduced their routes that go to Canada. For example, one used to be able to fly on American Airlines from Ottawa to Chicago, and then in Chicago connect to lots of AA flights. A number of years ago American canceled the Ottawa to Chicago route. Now, to fly on American from Ottawa, you will be routed on either a WestJet flight to Toronto and switch to a AA flight there, or on what used to be US Airlines (now AA) to I think it is Philly and then connect to AA flights there. For Delta out of Ottawa you fly to Detroit then change planes, or you are put on a Canadian codeshare to Toronto then connect to a Delta flight.
People sometimes find savings by crossing the border and flying out of a nearby US city for a couple reasons:
- more competition in the US domestic market means there can be considerably lower fares: e.g. Southwest sometimes has fares in the $79-$99 one way range, something you are highly unlikely to ever routinely see on a Canadian airline;
- Canada generally has MUCH higher taxes and fees on airline tickets; flying out of Ottawa the taxes and fees part of my tickets is at least $200 and is sometimes higher than the base part of the ticket; flying out of some US cities the taxes and fees can be in the low double digits, even if the base fare itself was comparable. Add that difference up across a family of several travelers and you can get substantial savings.
However that approach also has some downsides that need to be considered in the overall equation:
- the time and cost of driving to the US city (and putting enough extra time in to account for problems along the way, border crossing time, etc);
- possible overnight hotel charges on one or both ends of the trip
- weather conditions that can make such a trip risky at certain parts of the year; e.g. the nearest big US city to here is Syracuse, NY. But to get to Syracuse you drive down a stretch of upper NY state that is prone to storms coming off Lake Ontario. Making that trip in the wintertime is always a gamble -- the weather could be just fine here but a horrible blizzard along that stretch, which would be a problem if you are supposed to fly out of Syracuse - both getting there (if you could) and on what kind of delays there will be flyinf out of the airport.
- some of the nearby US cities have limited flight and airline availability, or the airline may be flying smaller regional jets (which has implications for carry-on baggage, for example)
SW
