The official start of Spring is just weeks away, and if you haven’t already started making travel plans for your 2024 vacation yet, it’s time to start. With that in mind, we here at BetCarolina.com decided to take a vacation from our usual North Carolina sports betting coverage to find out what North Carolina’s most popular airlines are, according to state residents.
To make our ranks we used Google Trends to analyze the search engine traffic of each major airline over a 90-day period, between December 2023 and March 2024.
With our data now ready to take flight, check out our list of North Carolina’s top five favorite airlines below.
Favorite Airlines of North Carolina Residents
American Airlines is Heavy Favorite in NC
It shouldn’t be a surprise to see American Airlines top our list as the number one most popular airline in North Carolina. After all, American carries more passengers worldwide annually than any other air travel operator in the world. That said, it is obviously massively popular locally in North Carolina as well. The Charlotte-Douglas Internal Airport (CLT) is the airlines second largest domestic hub, with American accounting for 88% of all commercial travel at CLT.
Delta Airlines is the next favorite operator amongst North Carolina residents. In fact, with 980 planes at its disposal, they actually outnumber American in fleet size. Crucial to its massive network of aircrafts is the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL). ATL is considered to be the world’s busiest airport, with over 250,000 passengers touching down daily.
In contrast to the mega operators at the top of the list, North Carolina’s third favorite airline is Spirit, a smaller carrier that offers affordable airfare for budget conscious travellers. Although primarily focused on domestic cities, Spirit also offers flights to desirable destinations in Mexico, Dominican Republic, and South America. Although the thing Spirit may be best known for are its bright yellow planes.
Number four on our list of North Carolina's most popular airlines is a relative newcomer on the scene, Breeze Airways. Although the company was only established in 2021, it has an air industry vet at the helm. In the past forty years, Breeze Airways CEO David Neeleman has founded five low-cost airlines, including WestJet and JetBlue.
North Carolina's fifth favorite airline is Southwest, which operates over 4,000 daily flights, and is considered to be the largest low-cost air carrier in the world. One incredible aspect of flying with Southwest is their uncharacteristically generous luggage policy, allowing two free checked bags for every passenger.
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Author
Jeff Parker is a writer for BetCarolina.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with an actual Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
