The airport is farther, but the trip may be shorter, cheaper

Sandra Martin lives in Westchester, minutes from Los Angeles International Airport. But she and her husband flew out of Ontario when they took their two daughters on a trip over spring break.

It sounds kind of crazy until you add it up: The family paid $4 less a day for parking and dodged incalculable levels of stress, breezing through security in five minutes, a feat with 7-year-old twins. The hour or so on the road to LA/Ontario International Airport hardly mattered to them, considering they saved $400 on airfare by booking flights to Spokane, Wash., on a regional carrier that doesn’t serve L.A.’s biggest airport.

“We couldn’t have done this at LAX,” Martin says.

People who once merely compared airlines are shopping airports these days. They make convoluted calculations to weigh airfares, drive times to terminals, anticipated security delays and parking costs, even the seating arrangements on particular planes that fly out of one airport but not another.

“Travelers today are astute. They’re not beholden to any one airline or airport anymore,” says Paul Haney, deputy executive director for Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX, one of five airports here that are within about an hour’s drive of one another.

So for Southern Californians, airport shopping isn’t exactly rocket science. Travel websites make it almost effortless, giving you the option of searching for airports within 80 or 100 miles of your departure city.

“It’s what a good travel agent would have done” in the old days, says Chris McGinnis, editor of Expedia Travel Trendwatch, an online newsletter.

The sites don’t answer the tough questions, though. With gasoline at more than $3 a gallon, is it worth driving 100 miles to save $100 on an airline ticket? More important, is it worth getting up an hour earlier?

During a visit to the airport in Ontario, it’s easy to find people who answer in the affirmative. One is Ricky Yngsdal of Glendale, a shipping manager for General Mills Inc. who lives 10 minutes from Bob Hope Airport in Burbank but drives 45 minutes to Ontario so he can fly nonstop to San Antonio on a jet with no middle seats.

“We’re lucky here in L.A. to have so many airports to choose from,” he says.

You just have to be flexible, as Travelocity.com’s Dan Toporek confirmed when he recently did some random searches using the website’s “compare surrounding airports” option.

With a few mouse clicks, Toporek concluded that a Palm Springs resident bound for Chicago could save $172 by driving an hour to the Ontario airport. His research of flying from Southern California to southern Florida found that LAX to Miami International was the most expensive route. Departing from John Wayne Airport in Orange County was $40 cheaper, and flying to Fort Lauderdale was $80 less.

None of this sounds like good news for LAX. It’s been losing domestic passengers since 2001, in part because people were put off by heightened security measures put in place there after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The sharp drop in domestic passenger traffic has been offset by rapid growth in international business, but LAX passenger numbers still went down from 2001 to 2006, from 61.6 million to 61 million.

Other airports also tightened security after 9/11, though travelers apparently found the effects less bothersome at smaller or newer facilities. The number of passengers using John Wayne Airport was up 31% from 2001 to 2006, and at Bob Hope it rose 27%. Ontario’s passenger numbers rose a modest 7% during the same period, but traffic is likely to accelerate with addition of a new regional carrier, ExpressJet. Passenger traffic at Long Beach, the smallest of the region’s airports, doubled after JetBlue Airways began service there in 2001. But LAX could rebound -- thanks to the competition.

United Airlines, the largest carrier at LAX, has reduced its fares on many of the routes that rival airlines serve out of Ontario. And after JetBlue began its New York service out of Long Beach, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines cut nonstop fares from LAX to John F. Kennedy Airport.

Who has the energy to put the work into finding the best airport deal? Denise Palazzola, for one.

She lives with her 8-year-old daughter, Julie, in Orange, about 15 minutes from John Wayne Airport. Palazzola did some computations and decided they would drive to Ontario to fly to Des Moines. The flight was nonstop; those going from John Wayne to Des Moines entailed two stopovers. The drive took about 50 minutes with traffic, but the airfare was about half as expensive.

“If I can save 50%,” Palazzola said, “I’m willing to make the drive.”

peter.pae@latimes.com

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Planning tips

Factor in all the traffic. If you live in Westchester and are flying out of Ontario in the morning, no worries; the drive east on I-10 is usually a breeze. But take the same route in the afternoon and you might end up using the money you didn’t spend on airfare for therapy.

Consider your mpg. Driving 100 miles round-trip to an alternative airport in a GMC Yukon XL (15 miles to the gallon) could set you back $22 at $3.30 a gallon.

Remember to shop on the other end. Your work isn’t done if you’ve reviewed the options only for taking off; landing at an alternative airport can save you money, time and stress.

Don’t trust travel websites for everything. Fares for some carriers, including JetBlue and Southwest, aren’t in the systems at Travelocity.com, Expedia.com or the others, and those two fly to more alternative airports.

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Airport shopping

Some Southern Californians drive to great lengths to catch the perfect flight -- which doesn’t always take off from the nearest airport. They weigh airfares, anticipated security delays and parking costs.

*--* Drive time to Flight Usual Ontario time Passenger(s) Home airport Airport savings The West- LAX 1 hr. 2 hrs. Martin chester (5 min. family away)

Ricky Glendale Burbank 45 min. 1 hr. Yngsdal (10 min. away)

The Orange John 50 min. 2 hrs. Palazzola Wayne family (15 min. away)

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Source: Times research