NEW YORK (WETM) – It’s the time of year to start thinking about the holidays. Millions of people will be taking to the skies to travel on vacations, to visit family, to just to get away. And if you’re booking a flight, one of your top concerns will be airfares.

To create this survey of holiday-time airfares, we looked at airports that are easily accessible from the Twin Tiers. These include airports in Elmira, Ithaca, Binghamton, Syracuse and Rochester. To find the prices, we used Kayak.com for all destinations and IFlySWA.com for Rochester and Syracuse.

This list also only includes flights that are 11 hours or less (including layovers) to seven popular cities across the U.S.: Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, Honolulu and Orlando. There are holiday flights that are 21 hours long and are cheaper than the shorter trips, but they include long layovers.

In general, flights from the smaller airports in Elmira, Ithaca and Binghamton are more expensive with less airline competition. For example, flights to Los Angeles are $500-$750 cheaper from Syracuse than from Binghamton or Elmira, respectively.

These are the cost of flights from the five local airports, as of September 21, 2022. These flights are scheduled to leave early in the morning on December 22 and return on December 27. Prices will fluctuate as more seats are booked:

To Miami:

  • Rochester: $700 Spirit and Jet Blue, $713 American
  • Syracuse: $570 Southwest (Wanna Get Away fare, limited seats)
  • Ithaca: $1309 United
  • Elmira: $1622 Delta
  • Binghamton: $1547 Delta

To Dallas:

  • Rochester: $672 American
  • Syracuse: $474 Allegiant out, Frontier return
  • Ithaca: $1016 United
  • Elmira: $958 Delta
  • Binghamton: $1031 Delta

To Los Angeles:

  • Rochester: $858 Delta
  • Syracuse: $741 American
  • Ithaca: $1088 Delta
  • Elmira: $928 Delta
  • Binghamton: $868 Delta

To Denver:

  • Rochester: $751 Delta; $743 Frontier out, JetBlue return
  • Syracuse: $560 Allegiant and Frontier (one leg each)
  • Ithaca: $1024 United
  • Elmira: $1208 Delta
  • Binghamton: $1171 Delta

To Atlanta:

  • Rochester: $437 Southwest (Wanna Get Away fair, limited seats)
  • Syracuse: $396 Southwest (Wanna Get Away fare, limited seats
  • Ithaca: $924 United
  • Elmira: $816 Delta
  • Binghamton: $938 Delta

To Honolulu:

  • Rochester $1334 American
  • Syracuse: $1334 United
  • Ithaca: $1893 United
  • Elmira: $1781 Delta
  • Binghamton: no flights; $351,519 air taxi (>11 hours)

To Orlando:

  • Rochester: $312 Frontier
  • Syracuse: $323 Frontier
  • Ithaca: $1229 United
  • Elmira: $571 Allegiant and Frontier
  • Binghamton: $671 Allegiant and Frontier