Columbia Transportation Tips by Dabs

Rental car

We rented a car through Enterprise as that was the cheapest rate on Expedia, I kept on eye on Hotwire but the rates never went any lower than what I reserved the car for. The daily rate was $30.65, the total with taxes $176.57 for 4 days. There are several other national companies that rent cars from the Columbia airport, the desks are all in terminal. By the time we got there, only a couple of cars were left so we didn't get the compact car we requested but it wasn't a Range Rover type gas guzzler either.

Mode: AROUND

Type: Car/Motor Home

Flying into Columbia

We flew into Columbia for our 4 day driving trip to Charleston-Savannah-Hickory because it was in between the cities we were visiting and I could use my United miles otherwise the ticket from Chicago would have been very expensive. The airport is very small and only has around 40 flights per day so getting to the airport 90 minutes before your flight leaves will leave you with about 85 extra minutes to spare. On the return flight, we returned our rental car, got our boarding passes and then went outside to sit on a bench and read.

For a 5:07pm flight the boarding time was 4:47pm, security took all of about 2 minutes, getting our boarding pass was another 2 minutes. The drive from downtown Columbia to the airport was about 15 minutes and very well marked.

Mode: TO

Type: Airplane

Website: http://www.columbiaairport.com/