Boiling Lake Trail, Dominica (Textor)
Air travel to the Caribbean has been undergoing a real shake-up for a few years now. Overbloated fares are giving way to actual competition between airlines, which is good for budget-conscious travelers.
There are multiple routes into the Caribbean on budget airlines. Here, we'll provide an overview of the routes from North America into the Caribbean by budget airlines. But before we do, we need to issue a warning, and a confusing one at that. Low-cost carriers are not always the cheapest way to travel. Regular fare airlines often come up with sale fares that rival the best that low-cost airlines are able to come up with. But even in the absence of special sales, the most expensive fare on a budget airline is usually much pricier than the cheapest fare on a regular airline.
Here we profile the direct routes flown by several budget airlines between U.S. and Caribbean airports.
Among budget airlines, JetBlue boasts the broadest range of routes into the Caribbean from the United States. While New York's JFK is the airline's most important hub for Caribbean travel, there are several other gateways to the region across the airline's route map.
From JFK, JetBlue fies to Cancún, Aruba, Barbados, St. Lucia, Kingston, St. Maarten, San Juan, Aguadilla, Ponce, Santo Domingo, Santiago DR, Puerto Plata, Montego Bay, and Nassau.
From Fort Lauderdale, JetBlue flies to Cancún, San Juan, Santo Domingo, and Nassau.
From Boston, JetBlue flies to Aruba, Cancún, Montego Bay, Nassau, St. Maarten, San Juan, and Santo Domingo.
From Orlando, JetBlue flies to Aguadilla, Cancún, Montego Bay, Nassau, Ponce, San José (Costa Rica), San Juan, and Santo Domingo.
From Washington Dulles, JetBlue flies to Cancún and San Juan.
Lastly, JetBlue flies between Cancún and Tampa.
Spirit Airlines flies from its Fort Lauderdale base to a wide range of Caribbean destinations: Freeport, Bahamas; Nassau, Santiago, DR; Port-Au-Prince; Punta Cana, DR (seasonally); San Juan; Aguadilla, PR; St. Maarten; St. Thomas; Kingston; Montego Bay; Aruba; Cancún; San Pedro Sula; and Cartagena, as well as several Central American capitals, including Guatemala City, Panama City, San José, and Managua. Spirit also flies between Detroit and Cancún.
AirTran, with a primary hub in Atlanta, flies to Cancún (from Atlanta and Washington-Baltimore) and San Juan (from Atlanta, Washington-Baltimore, and Orlando).
Frontier Airlines flies to Cancún (from Denver, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City), and connects from Denver nonstop to Cozumel and San José, Costa Rica. The latter is a good launching pad for trips to Costa Rica's Caribbean coast.
Minneapolis-St. Paul's Sun Country Airlines flies seasonally between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Cozumel, Montego Bay, Punta Cana, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and San Juan. Sun Country also flies seasonally between Dallas and Cozumel, and year round to Cancún from both Minneapolis-St. Paul and Dallas.