Officials with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), recently published air fare data from the second quarter of 2015.
The BTS uses surveys to determine average fares based on domestic-itinerary fares. These include round-trip fares if the customer doesn’t specify or separately purchases another ticket for the return journey. If the customer does buy a return ticket, then the included ticket is a one-way fare.
During the second quarter of 2015, the average domestic air fare fell to $385, down from $396 in the second quarter of 2014.
An estimated 34 percent of the fares were one-way trips and were calculated based on total ticket value, including the airlines’ prices, fees and taxes. Fares are specifically for only the ticket price, not for baggage purchase or additional, optional services. It is important to note that these averages exclude abnormally high fares, frequent-flier fares or zero fares.
Publishing air fare data from the second quarter of 2015 had been postponed because there were data-quality issues that needed to be fixed.
