I just don’t get it. Earlier this month I had to attend a family affair in Baltimore. I needed a roundtrip ticket that would fly me to Baltimore one day and back home the next.

The cheapest flight out of Charleston International Airport was about $870, the most expensive $1,040. This is to Baltimore, mind you, not Tahiti or Bangkok or Shangri-La.

Columbia’s airfares were just as ridiculous.

Then I tried Florence—not the one in Italy, the one in South Carolina. I never even knew Florence had an airport until my brother mentioned it. I’m glad he did. I booked a roundtrip flight from Florence to Baltimore, with a connection in Charlotte, for about $360 and change.

True, I had to drive about two hours to Florence Regional Airport and fly on a U.S. Airways turboprop to Charlotte, but my total travel time—driving and then flying—was 4 and ½ hours. And I got where I needed to go smoothly and on time.

Had I flown out of Charleston, the trip would have taken about eight hours because first you fly to Atlanta, then to Norfolk, Va., then to Philadelphia and finally to Baltimore. Another flight would have taken me first to Charlotte, then Columbus, Ohio, then to Philly and last to Baltimore.

Or how about flying to Atlanta first, then to the moon, then Mars, then wherever before landing in B-More? No, I didn’t find such a flight. But considering our goofy state of air travel, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had.

Why is flying out of Charleston so insanely expensive? It gets my blood up (and yours too, probably) to the point where I’m tempted to incite a massive scream-fest outside the airport’s doors.

Now that I’ve calmed down, I realize our high airfares are not the airport’s fault. It’s the airlines’ fault.

In their eyes, Charleston is still a sleepy little backwater town that simply doesn’t give them enough business. So they inflate their airfares to cover the empty seats they supposedly face here.

That’s what I’ve heard, and it’s a joke. For one thing, on any given day the airport parking lot is packed with cars as far as the eye can see. Apparently, folks are gritting their teeth and flying despite the high airfares.

For another, Savannah is just as “backwater” as we are, is smaller than we are, yet has cheaper airfares. At this writing, flights for an overnight round trip to Baltimore from Savannah range from $560 to $836 on Expedia.com. Flying the same jets out of Charleston to Baltimore costs between $685 and $1,323.

Charleston’s business community has been battling our nutty airfares for several years. Led by Business Journal Executive Publisher Bill Settlemyer, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Air Service Task Force began a campaign for affordable airfares in 2003 and last year came close to landing AirTran, a discount airliner whose hub is Atlanta.

AirTran nixed us, but we did get Independence Air, a low-fare carrier out of Dulles, Va. However, Independence Air flies only to about 40 cities, Baltimore not among them. (I suppose I could have flown Independence to Washington-Dulles, the airliner’s closest airport to Baltimore. The cost would have been $229 round trip. The curses from family members faced with picking me up? Priceless.) Also, Independence Air’s parent company, Flyi, recently filed for bankruptcy—not the cheeriest news for cost-conscious air travelers.

Indeed, the scene for the U.S. airline industry has been as bleak as a winter wasteland. Delta Airlines filed for bankruptcy Sept. 14. Ditto for Northwest Airlines. American Airlines reported a $153 million net loss for the third quarter. Continental Airlines has been reporting losses since Sept. 11, 2001. United Airlines has been operating under bankruptcy protection since 2002.

Seems to me the picture would be prettier for the industry if carriers lowered their airfares so that more folks could afford to fly. Low fares would keep the planes filled, and the sheer volume of travelers would fly the industry from the red to the black. That’s my theory, but then I’ve never studied the economics of air travel.

Still, why not try it? The industry, which is about one failed engine short of a crash, hasn’t much to lose.

Meanwhile, Lowcountry business leaders will have to keep up the affordable airfares fight. They might consider this: convert Charleston International Airport to a larger version of Florence Regional Airport. Dump the jets and have turboprop planes fly us to Atlanta, Savannah or Charlotte, where we can catch jets to wherever we need to go.

That’s what most of us do anyway.

Dennis Quick is the senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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