Domestic airfares can change rapidly based on consumer demand and availability. When booking flights domestically, it is best to plan more than two weeks ahead of your scheduled departure date to find the best fares. Flying in the off-season can help as well. In the United States, domestic carriers often have their best sales in the winter months following Christmas, when air travel slows down, according to the Bureau of Transportation's air travel statistics.
Word Web Online defines a domestic flight as one that "begins and ends in the same country." Similarly, domestic airfares are the costs of airline tickets for flights which land in the same country that they originate.
Airfare for domestic flights can fluctuate significantly depending on whether you are traveling regionally or between large national cities. Major cities are often connected by direct flights between international airports and can be less expensive than flights to small, regional airports, which require multiple flights, layovers and the use of smaller commuter planes.
Defining domestic airfares is a way to distinguish from international airfares, which can often be more expensive due to their nature as long-haul flights and the larger aircraft they require. However, if you are flying between major international cities, especially those served by discount airlines, flying internationally is not always more costly.
Some domestic carriers serve different regions of a country and provide several daily commuter flights between small airports, which often diminishes the prices of airfares between the three or four cities served. These domestic airfares can be competitive.
Domestic air travel generally takes less time than international travel. While the flights are often shorter, this is not the only reason. When traveling internationally, more security measures are in place and airlines recommend that you arrive at the airport up to three hours before your flight, as opposed to the one-and-a-half to two hours required for domestic travel.
In 2009, an average of about 725,000 domestic flights per month were recorded in the United States by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which also recorded between 44 million and 55 million revenue passenger enplanements a month in the same period. Passengers logging miles through a domestic air carrier rewards program could have logged a total of about 50 billion miles per month, enough for about 2 billion free domestic "reward" flights on carriers charging 25,000 miles for domestic flights.
