You’ve heard about it for at least days, if not weeks or months. But if you’re flying out of Charleston on Tuesday, August 22 and you haven’t booked your flight, you’re pretty much screwed.
For example, according to Google Flights, the cheapest flight out of CHS to any New York airport is a $765, 35-hour JetBlue flight to JFK with a 32-hour layover in Boston. Not really sure why anyone would book a flight with a 30+ hour layover, but hey, you saved $100! For reference, that’s more than 3.5x the normal $210 airfare for the non-stop JetBlue route to JFK.
There are plenty of shorter, slightly more expensive flights out of CHS, but browsing the Google Flights map, you’re hard pressed to find anything less than $800 one-way even with long layovers. If you want to go non-stop, a 75-minute flight to Charlotte on American will run you a fresh $1,374 (first class on a commuter jet, NBD.)
So, unless you’re driving to your final destination (assuming we all make it through the eclipse), just book a hotel room and stay the night and fly out the next day. It’ll almost surely be cheaper.
Love Best of Charleston? Help the Charleston City Paper keep Best of Charleston going every year with a donation. Or sign up to become a member of the Charleston City Paper club.