What Flying From GSP Actually Costs

Where each airport wins

The five biggest median-fare gaps in each direction, latest quarter. Hover a bar for the fares.

The busiest routes, latest quarter

“Median paid” is the middle fare: half of travelers paid less, half paid more. “Typical range” is the middle half of all fares — 1 in 4 tickets was cheaper than it, 1 in 4 pricier. All fares one-way, per person.

Fare history:

Solid line = the middle fare paid each quarter from GSP; dashed = the same destination from Charlotte. Shaded band = the typical range (the middle half of fares).

The drive-to-Charlotte verdict

Where these numbers come from, in plain English

• The source: every three months, the U.S. Department of Transportation publishes a big random sample — about 1 ticket in every 10 — of real airline tickets sold in the U.S. (its official name is the DB1B survey). These are prices people actually paid, not the asking prices you see on Google Flights. It’s free and public; anyone can download the same files we did.
• The “median” fare is the middle ticket: half of travelers paid less, half paid more. We use the middle instead of the average so a handful of last-minute or first-class tickets can’t drag the number around.
• What a fare includes: the ticket plus the taxes and fees charged at purchase. It does not include bags or seat picks, so budget airlines look a little cheaper here than the real cost of flying with a suitcase. Fares under $25 (mostly free award and employee tickets) and over $9,999 are left out, following the standard practice for this dataset.
• When we stay quiet: if a route had fewer than 15 sampled tickets in a quarter, we don’t show it, because tiny samples produce junk numbers. The drive-to-Charlotte verdict is stricter still: at least 50 sampled tickets at both airports.
• Both directions count: a Greenville–New York ticket is the same route whether the buyer lives here or there, so we combine them.
• Layovers are in the mix: the medians include both nonstop and connecting tickets. That’s why we show each airport’s nonstop share — a cheaper Charlotte fare that adds a layover isn’t really the same product.
• The drive math, in plain dollars: Charlotte’s airport is roughly 100 miles farther from Greenville each way. At the IRS’s official 70 cents per mile (a rate meant to cover gas plus wear and tear on your car), plus the parking difference for a 3-day trip, driving to Charlotte costs about $146 extra. Count gas alone (about 25 cents a mile) and it’s about $56. We deliberately use the bigger number, so when this page says the drive is worth it, it really is.
• Why some verdicts say “For 2+”: fares and savings are per person, but the drive costs the same whether the car holds one person or four. A $75-per-person saving doesn’t beat $146 for a solo traveler, but it does for a couple. The traveler buttons at the top of the page do exactly this math for your group size.
• Dollars are as-of-that-year: a 2018 fare is shown in 2018 dollars; we didn’t adjust for inflation.
• Counts are a sample: because the government samples about 10% of tickets, real passenger volumes are roughly 10× the “tickets sampled” number shown up top.
• We checked our math: using our raw files to rebuild the government’s own published average GSP fare (Q1 2025: $482.35) reproduces it to within four cents.