How buying flights in person at the Provo airport can be cheaper

By Carly Coombs | Posted: Nov. 8, 2024

If you’re a Provo local, you might have heard that buying your tickets at the Provo airport can be cheaper (and if you haven’t heard, now you have). 

Allegiant and Breeze, two budget airlines that fly out of Provo, allow customers to purchase flights at the ticket counter for a discount. 

The tickets come at a cheaper price because it waives an airline fee that’s tacked on when you purchase online. In Allegiant’s case, buying in person avoids the electronic carrier usage charge of $22 for each segment (so $44 for a direct round trip flight). For Breeze, purchasing at the ticket counter waives the technology development charge, which varies based on the flight. 

After hearing about this trick, I decided to try it out for myself and headed to the Provo airport to buy a ticket for an upcoming trip to Dallas. 

The first thing to know is that Allegiant and Breeze have a limited time window for when you can buy tickets at the airport, with each airline being open for ticket purchases for two hours each week. 

Breeze’s counter is open on Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and Allegiant changes its hours fairly often, sometimes monthly. You can find Allegiant’s hours on the airline’s website here. 

Before you make the trip to the airport, I would recommend checking the tickets online to see how much you would save if you booked in person. 

In my case, I was booking a flight on Breeze, which would have been $49 (one-way to Dallas) if purchased online. When looking online, check the taxes and fees breakdown to see how much you could save by purchasing in person. For Breeze, you’re looking for the “technology development charge,” and for Allegiant, look for the “electronic carrier usage charge.” 

For my flight, the technology development charge made up $33 of the $49 ticket, meaning that I would only pay $16 (!!) for the flight at the airport, which was worth it in my book. 

I got to the Provo airport around 9:45 a.m. to get in line at the ticket counter. The line was fairly long, with maybe 15-20 people before me (one woman even brought a camping chair to sit on while she waited). 

Breeze has a pretty good system to get people through quickly, with employees handing out papers to people in line to write down their name, destination city and dates, Breeze loyalty number, and birthdate. 

I was in line for about 30 minutes before I got up to the counter, and booking my flight only took another 2-3 minutes from there. 

The email receipt for the flight I purchased at the Provo airport, adding up to $16 total. 

For my flight, I booked Breeze’s lowest fare, which doesn’t include a carry-on bag or seat selection. One important thing to know is extras like seat selection and bags will cost you more to buy at the airport than if you bought them online. But don’t worry, if you need to purchase extras, you can still do all that online after you buy your initial ticket, which will be the cheapest. 

For example, a carry-on bag on Breeze will cost you $30 if paid online. That cost jumps to $75 if you pay for it at the airport.

Buying at the airport will take up some of your time, but the savings could be worth it, especially if you are booking multiple tickets. For example, booking five round trip tickets on Allegiant for your family could save $220 by avoiding the carrier usage charge. 

Why is buying in person cheaper?

The answer is taxes. Airlines have to pay a 7.5% federal tax on ticket fares for domestic flights in the U.S., but this tax doesn’t apply to optional fees. 

So, for low-cost airlines like Breeze and Allegiant, tacking on “optional” fees and keeping the base fare low is a way for them to save some money. 

For the fee to be considered optional, there needs to be a way for the passenger to opt out, hence the two-hour window each week to book your flight at the airport. 

Last important note: This hack doesn’t work for major airlines like Delta or American Airlines. The trick usually only applies to budget airlines (You can do this with Spirit and Frontier at the SLC airport).