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When you're a university student, every penny counts. So when Michael Wilder, 23, wanted to travel from Toronto to Vancouver this month, he had no qualms about flying between Buffalo and Seattle to cut his costs in half.

Wilder's odyssey of lost sleep and inconvenience would send shudders through many older, wealthier travellers. His outbound journey involved a late-night Greyhound bus to Buffalo; an airport shuttle; a 6 a.m. Continental Airlines flight east to Newark, N.J., that connected to a westbound flight to Seattle; and finally an airport bus to Vancouver. Total travel time: 20½ hours. The return trip was less onerous — but only slightly so — because a friend picked him up in Buffalo.

Back when Wilder made his booking, the lowest Toronto-Vancouver fare he could find was $650, including taxes and fees. His Buffalo-Seattle flight by way of Newark, converted to Canadian dollars, cost $190. Add in the cost of bus tickets and his total saving was about $300.

“If you can afford the time of taking shuttles from the airports to the cities you want to go to, you can save significant amounts of money,” says Wilder, who attends McGill University in Montreal.

Wilder is at the extreme end of one of the fastest-growing segments of the Canadian travel market: airline passengers who start trips at U.S. border airports. This past September, on-line travel agency Expedia.ca sold twice as many tickets to Southern Ontario residents departing from Buffalo as they did in the same month a year earlier, managing director Sean Shannon says.

Pricing is behind this surge, Shannon says. When all fees and taxes are included, and all fares converted to Canadian dollars, Expedia.ca charged an average $580 for flights between a Canadian airport and one in the United States in September, but only $322 for flights between two U.S. airports. Amazingly, those savings come at a time when three of the six largest U.S. carriers are operating under bankruptcy protection.

C. Douglas Hartmayer, a spokesman for Buffalo Niagara International Airport, says 25 per cent of its passengers now come from Ontario, with that ratio rising as high as 31 per cent during holiday periods. The airport has started running print and radio ads in Southern Ontario aimed at attracting even more Canadians, Hartmayer says, adding that Florida and Washington, D.C., are the most popular destinations.

Officials at Vermont's Burlington International, 90 minutes south of Montreal, estimate that 20 per cent of its fliers are from Quebec.

The Buffalo and Burlington airports both report that the number of Canadian passengers has been growing over the past few years, ever since U.S.-based discount carriers moved in, spurring competition and forcing down fares — even those of traditional mainline carriers such as American Airlines and US Airways.

In a way, it's a throwback to the early 1980s, when a strong loonie and $99 fares from discount carrier People Express sent Canadians flocking to border airports. Those days ended with the demise of People Express, the weakening of the Canadian dollar and increased fare competition in Canada.

Now, the dollar is strong again and a number of Canadian carriers are out of business, including Canadian Airlines, Canada 3000 and Jetsgo. Taxes and fees on Canadian tickets are painfully high, and there's a plethora of no-frills carriers serving U.S. border points — four alone at Buffalo: JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Airtran Airways and Independence Air.

In addition to Buffalo, Seattle and Burlington, other popular border airports include Detroit (for Windsor and London, Ont.), and Syracuse (for Ottawa and Kingston, Ont.).

Canadians using Buffalo and Burlington are most likely to be flying to cities in the Eastern United States. Flights to more distant destinations would involve changes of planes elsewhere. But Seattle and Detroit are major hubs with direct flights around the world. Vancouver residents have been known to save money by driving to Seattle to catch flights to the Orient. Ironically, some of those flights involve a stopover at Vancouver airport.

While few air travellers would put themselves through an ordeal like Wilder's to cut costs, many will cross the border if savings are significant and hassles few. For a vacation in Phoenix over Thanksgiving, David Ritter of Abbotsford, B.C., booked himself, his wife and their three children on Alaska Airlines out of Seattle, a 2½-hour drive away, rather than flying from the much closer Vancouver airport. He paid roughly $200 a ticket compared with $450 (the lowest Vancouver fare he could find on the Internet). The total airfare savings: $1,250. An added advantage, he says, was that the Seattle-Phoenix flight was direct, while Vancouver-Phoenix involved connections. The deal sounded so good, two neighbouring families decided to make the trip with him.

Along with price, convenience can be an attraction at border airports. Buffalo and Burlington, for example, tend to be less congested than Toronto and Montreal.

While cross-border flying is mainly an option for vacationers, frequent business travellers also choose U.S. departure points from time to time, often for a more comfortable flight, more frequent flier points, or both. Ken Hamer, a Vancouver-based marine navigation technician, could have paid $850 for a recent business flight to Houston using Air Canada service with a connection in Toronto. That would have meant economy seating all the way. Instead, he bought an economy ticket for a short hop from Vancouver to Seattle, and a first-class ticket for a Seattle-Houston flight on United Airlines. His total cost was $650 and he earned a 50-per-cent frequent-flier-point bonus with United because he was in first-class.

What does cross-border flying mean for large Canadian airports? Despite some diversion of cost-conscious travellers to Buffalo, traffic out of Toronto's Pearson International is increasing “quite extensively,” spokeswoman Connie Turner says, adding that a couple of the discount carriers that already serve Buffalo are now in talks with Toronto about possibly starting service there.

But Pearson's landing fees, among the world's highest, are a concern, she says. In a bid to control costs, the airport has been lobbying the federal government to reduce its rents.

While many U.S. airports are subsidized by Washington, those in Canada pay rents to Ottawa, with Toronto carrying the heaviest burden, she adds.

Air Canada has also been vocal in the fight to put Toronto on an even playing field. In a recent interview with Airlines International magazine, president Robert Milton predicted that airlines will start flying around Pearson because of its high fees and continuing construction. Air Canada already bypasses the airport with some of its Regional Jet flights, he stated, calling this “very disheartening” for “the hometown airline.”

Special to The Globe and Mail