“You’re driving there?” I was asked this in the same tone someone might ask, “You’re ripping your fingernails out?” See, the company I was working for at the time was doing a “brand activation” at a Supercross race – we were doing them at every race on the circuit that year – and while the rest of team was hopping on a two-hour flight to get to the event, I drew the short straw and would be driving the five or six hours to the venue so I could bring a pickup-truck bedload’s worth of stuff we needed to set up the activation.
But I hadn’t actually drawn the short straw, at least not accidentally: no, I requested the short straw, and the drive it represented. I was looking forward to it, in fact. This stunned my work buddies, who thought I would have it hard while they had it easy. It was the other way around, I explained.
“Let’s do the math,” I said. “Is a two-hour flight really a two-hour flight? You’re going to drive about a half-hour to the airport, take at least another 30 minutes to get through security and to the gate, and then blow an hour waiting at the gate and boarding. We’ll assume the plane takes off and lands on time, and the flight is precisely two hours. You’re going to kill another 30 minutes deplaning and getting your bags, then 30 more getting the rental cars, and then you’re driving at least 40 minutes to the venue. That’s 340 minutes, divide by 60 … five hours and 36 minutes.”
I could see it starting to register. “Going through security, sitting in a gate chair eating a garbage lunch, squeezing into a coach seat, waiting in line at the rental place … none of that sounds fun to me. While you’re doing that, I’m going to hop into a nice, new Honda Ridgeline [the company had just purchased one as an errand runner] and take a scenic drive through southern Texas – alone – as I blast my music as loud as I want. I’ll stop to refill the tank at Buc-Ee’s, stretch my legs a bit and enjoy a chopped brisket sandwich with those hand-cut potato chips of theirs, then hit a full-size, nice-n-private bathroom stall before heading back out on the road in a comfy seat, with my tunes on the stereo and a giant Coke in the cupholder. I’ll arrive about the same time you do. Who will be more refreshed and less sore, you think?”
So, long story short: if the drive is going to be 12 hours or less, and it’s not expected to be a traffic beatdown, I will choose driving over flying every time.
Your turn: How Long Does A Drive Have To Be Before You Consider Flying Instead?
Top graphic images: depositphotos.com
From where I live, there is basically nowhere I can fly to that I would drive to unless I specifically needed my car there for some reason, or in the case of driving between my Florida and Maine homes I have STUFF I need to get there. The closest hub airport I can fly to directly is Atlanta (and given I always fly AA really Charlotte), and that is at least an 8hr drive from here, and with traffic can easily be 10hrs.And even if driving and flying take the same amount of time, I am still going to fly, as I can sit in first class sipping a drink and reading a book instead of directly dealing with all the brain-dead booger heads on the highways of America from behind the wheel of my car.
The furthest I would normally consider driving is Jacksonville, which is ~4.5hrs from here, but I can’t get there without a connection and layover. But if it was a work trip I would still probably fly. Not my money.
As a very frequent flyer with PreCheck, the amount of time needed for airports is usually wildly overblown unless your home airport is a MAJOR huge hub airport or it is an unusually busy time of year like holidays or down here, Spring Break or post-Easter Exodus week. My three home airports are all small and very quickly navigated 99% of the time.
I hear real ID is being enforced and almost no one has the paperwork to get it done.
Not quite yet, May 7th is the current deadline. I’ll believe it when it happens.
I can’t even imagine NOT having a real ID at this point. It was supposed to be in effect MANY years ago (2008!!). My state doesn’t give you a choice, it’s RealID or no license (or State ID) at all – and they started that *15* years ago, in 2010. I did not find the process difficult at all, and I literally had just moved to this state when I did it. I closed on my house here and got my FL driver’s license the same day back in 2017. Passport, car registration, mortgage docs, and SS card, done. There really is just no excuse at this point for not having one.
I’m curious about what you need for paperwork. I’ve had a drivers license with a star on it for years. The state I lived in required them about maybe 10 years ago, and then I had to go though it again when we moved to a new state a few years ago.
From what I recall, it took a birth certificate or social security card, two pieces of mail to verify current addresses (utility bill, bank statement, etc…) and I think a current photo ID (passport, state ID or driver’s license). Am I misremembering, or have the requirements changed?
In Washington state, they’re relatively flexible. Essentially, a passport, your current driver’s license, and a couple of utility bills with an address that matches your current DL. The hard part is getting an appointment to take care of it. The first opening I could get last week within 25 miles was April 23rd. My previous license from Texas, issued more than six years ago, has the magical gold star. The state government in WA is usually more efficient than what I experienced in TX, but they kinda dropped the ball on this one.
I have a work trip next week driving from Asheville, NC to Huntsville, AL. It’s about a 5.5 hour drive, or the same to fly since I have to connect somewhere. It was a big internal debate for me. If I was paying for it, I would definitely drive since I’m cheap. I would rather sit on an airplane and not have to pay attention to anything. Ultimately this trip came down to the extra flexibility, since I can cut an extra hotel night out.
My family’s driving limit is 5-6 hours. My own limit driving by myself is a bit higher, but I have high frequent flyer status with a couple of airlines thanks to my job, so I can get a cheap flight and usually enjoy first class.
My number is 8 hours but without regurgitating the good points others have said I’ll also add in the benefit of having my own schedule. When flying you’re at the mercy of their times.
Early flights = crap sleep the night before
Mid morning flights = more relaxed getting ready but not much time on either end
Afternoon flight = boredom waiting for flight and tired arrival
Evening flights = work all day, fly, then probably up too late for the next day
Or you can drive. Leave when you want, stop when you want, take detours, etc. All while listening to what you consider good taste in music.
I can drive 12 hours each way pretty comfortably, and have driven 16 hours in one sitting before. Just depends on how much time I have at the destination. If it’s a place where I’d have to pay to rent a car, then driving there makes even more sense. The only time I generally prefer flying is when I’m going one-way to buy a car from somewhere that’s 6+ hours away, like when I flew out to Vancouver, Canada to buy an old BMW and then drove it home 22 hours to Phoenix, AZ.
Last time I did that, flying didn’t even occur to me.
Never thought of it.
Congrats on driving 22 hours in an old BMW and actually getting there!
For me it’s not about how long the drive is, it’s simply whether or not I have time to do it. All else being equal I’d EASILY rather spend a couple days driving 20+ hrs to the beach for vacation than fly, but I’m not going to waste 4 days out of my precious beach week driving. Get me there as fast as possible, I don’t care how. If I only have a 3 day weekend to get a trip done, I probably just don’t have time to drive. There’s no maximum time or distance I’ll drive, but flying is usually all I have time for.
Time notwithstanding, I’d say anything more than one full day driving is enough for me to at least consider flying. Once hotels become involved, basically. But flying is such a pain in the butt, even then I’d be on the fence.
If it takes three days out of a five day vacation, then I fly.
In general about 12 hours of driving for a decent length trip. Something that’s a few days or takes multiple days to drive, plane would be my preference.
Although it’s kinda hard to fit an entire room’s worth of furniture in a suitcase, even with the expansion unzipped 🙂
I can’t even fit a room’s worth of furniture in my car. But how I loathe driving U-Hauls!
Depends on the time difference and how much the drive sucks. As an example, Chicago is a roughly 3.5 hour drive for me in ideal conditions. From my genuinely awesome regional airport, flight time is advertised as approximately 1 hour, but factoring in the “unproductive” travel time (drive to the airport, check bags, sit at the airport, board plane, taxi through O’Hare [which in itself can be longer than the actual airtime], deplaning, get checked bags, leave the airport, get transportation) the time difference is essentially moot. I tried it a few times since work paid for it, but it’s not worth the hassle, even though I have to drive through Northern Indiana ((shudder)). Being able to travel on my own schedule and not be hindered by baggage restrictions is nice.
If the all-inclusive flight and drive time are more or less equivalent and 6 hours or less, I’ll probably choose driving.
INDIANA
The Wagon Broke, So We Stayed
The drive has to be at least 6 hours each way for me to consider flying. Further parameters include
1 – total time away
2 – am I bringing my 12.5 ft kayak.
I fly about 200,000 miles per year. To the extent I can, I fly hub-to-hub only. Otherwise, I fly by flight availability. From my home, I drive 4 hours to Anchorage instead of 2 hours to Fairbanks because, depending on the season, Delta may only have one flight/day out of Fairbanks but four flights/day out of Anchorage. A flight got canceled dues to mechanical issues? I can usually catch the next flight, unless it it 24 hours from now.
It also has to do with layovers. Next month, I will be going to a location in Washington state. It is a 2 hour drive from Seattle and a 45 minute drive from Portland. But I cannot get a direct flight to Portland. So I fly into Seattle. Wait one hour for layover, then catch a 1 hour flight to PDX. By this time, I would be there if I flew into Seattle and drove to the customer site. Flying into PDX means I still have almost an hour to go.
Distance to the airport also plays a role. Chattanooga to Atlanta? It’s a 2 hour flight, but when thunderstorms roll in, flights from Europe, etc… get landing priority and your puddle-jumper from Chattanooga sits on the ground until weather clears. For this reason, I rarely fly anywhere less than a 5-hour drive from ATL.
Short story is that you rarely get delayed when driving, but there are dozens of reasons why you can get delayed when flying.
Hmm, there are a lot of factors, as it depends on the need to go to a place, how long I want to stay, whether there is a decently-priced airport nearby, who is going with me, etc.
Yes, all that is taken into account.
I’ve both driven and flown to Seattle for various reasons.
I drive to Mammoth, because the flight is pretty expensive and I’m usually with many other folks, and the road there has some awesome views and points of interest.
I don’t think I’ve ever flown to Vegas, despite the ease of airports. I think it is because I like leaving when I want to.
So, in my present state and actual State, I could see driving as far as the Utah southern national parks. Phoenix is a toss-up. North: Tahoe and SF and Sacramento. South: No need to drive into Mexico again. I have flown out of Tijuana. That was pretty easy.
The math changes with duration at the destination mostly. If I am going to be somewhere for a week, sure, 12 hours drive sucks, but I can live with it. If I am going to be there for a weekend, then anything more than 5 or 6 hours is a no-go for me.
12 hours. Period. And then the decision will be how long do I have to make the trip in total
Normally I’d say I drive if it’s the same time or less than the flight time + 5 hours to account for the bullshit at either end. However, if I can reasonably fly out of LGB (Long Beach Airport), I’ll fly a little more often because I’m 15 minutes away by surface streets and it’s not much of a hassle.
and long beach is a rad airport.
For sure! But it sure helps that I make a right out of my neighborhood, drive a few miles straight, and it goes right into the airport. 🙂
This is a special circumstance, but it applies here. I live on Vancouver Island, and there are times the 20-30min flight to Vancouver is definitely preferred over the 90min ferry ride. You have driving to and from the ferry terminal on both ends wich adds anywhere from 1.5 to 4 hours depending on your final destination, then you also have the added cost of driving on the ferry, plus any parking fees later on. If you catch a standby seat sale with Harbour Air you can do downtown Victoria to downtown Vancouver in around half an hour for a little more than a drive-on ferry ticket. There’s also no security and you only have to be there like 20 min in advance(if that). It’s a really nice way to travel, especially on long weekends when the ferries are a mess.
And you get to fly on a Twin-Otter on floats, which is one of the coolest planes on the planet!
I have driven across the country once. I drive from NorCal to SoCal regularly but I have never driven to Las Vegas, I always fly because it’s like $50 each way. I did drive from NorCal to Twin Falls, ID with my wife and it sucked but flights are really expensive to there or we would fly into Boisie and still have to rent a car and drive for an hour. That was in an EV even and it was uneventful. With an EV it’s so cheap to drive overall.
I pretty much will only drive somewhere if I can do it in a single day of driving. Further than that it’s a flight. The exception was work because I would go to multiple offices and places like Bishop, CA regularly from NorCal.
Agreed: I’ll drive up to 12 hours before I’ll consider a flight, unless there’s an emergency to which I’m responding or, you know, if there’s an ocean in the way. .
Depends on where I and and where I’m going.
2 hours north is DC – traffic and parking is such that taking the train is a better choice.
6 hours south is my parents new home – because they’re in their 80s, over an hour away from an airport, and rental cars are a pain down there, I’m more likely to drive.
When I lived in LA – I thought nothing of driving 2 hours east to Palm Springs or 2 hours north to Santa Barbara.
SF was either a drive or fly event – depending on what I was doing and where I was going in conjunction with that trip (Sonoma? Monterey?) If I drove, I’d take the 101 and stop in San Luis Obispo or Paso Robles for the night – making the northbound trip to SF an overall 8 hour drive north. Then I’d return south via the 5, which generally took 6 hours.
If you are flying from SF to Monterey they you are in a very different tax bracket than I am.
That’s not what they said; he was talking about when they lived in LA and maybe wanted to hit Monterey while he was up north.
Thanks for explaining, it’s not like I was joking.
If it was a joke, it didn’t even make me chuckle.
You know, that was meaner than I meant it to be, sorry. I’m just so used to people being assholes on the Internet that I didn’t even see how your comment could be construed any other way. My apologies.
Longer than 5 hours before I’ll consider flying.
Still, I will often opt for the 8-, 9-, 12-, 24-hour drive.
All depends.
I am probably an outlier, but I drive a regular loop 660 miles each way several times a year because of work between two locations. It is just far enough to be too far to drive, but just close enough to be too short to fly–it’s not a cheap flight (though some discount carriers are seasonally affordable more recently).
About 500 miles is ideal when I’m alone, after that I’m miserable. I nap for this long trip, which is necessary but makes it even longer which is worse.
I do bring my family sometimes because it’s also a vacation destination, so then there’s shared driving and it’s more tolerable, but still, that long is still long.
It’s not about distance. It’s about access to roads.
The only reason I don’t drive to Europe is because I physically can’t. I drive everywhere on this continent unless someone (work) makes me fly.
Came to say this. If there was a Bearing Strait Bridge, and Russia wasn’t batshit crazy, I’d drive to Europe.
Check out pictures of the roads in winter first.
Call it 6 hours-ish? Absent other factors I will drive to Las Vegas (4.5 hours) but flip-flop between driving and flying to Phoenix (6 hours, generally fly for business, drive for personal). Anything above that and it’s a deliberate decision to do a road trip for other reasons (e.g. 15 hours to Wyoming for hunting since I need to transport one or more firearms and hunting gear, and haul meat home). If it’s a business trip the decisions are skewed towards flying; if it’s personal I’m a lot more open to road tripping it.
And also, you are so right about the flight experience. It isn’t the length of the flight, it’s the 45 minute drive to the airport, the extra 20 minutes to take the shuttle from the parking lot to the terminal, going through security, sitting an hour before the flight, crappy food, annoying people, then on the other end waiting to deplane, waiting on baggage claim if needed, getting ground transportation, and making my way to the destination that I would have driven straight to. With a car I have all my stuff with me, no flight delays and I leave and arrive when I want to.
“With a car I have all my stuff with me”
Ding ding ding. With airlines gouging big time for baggage, a car or SUV offers enough room to bring as much baggage as you can stuff back there. We even bring a pedestal fan, great for those stuffy hotel rooms.
I find people who travel with piles of stuff fascinating. I can go on a week-long work trip with just an under seat size carryon bag small enough that it never has to be gate checked even on 33 seat prop airplanes, and my small laptop bag. If I am driving from FL to ME, I take the same bag. But I only do that drive when I have to. Actually flying up for a few days tomorrow.
I guess I am just low maintenance. And single. When I go on vacation with my female bestie it is hilarious how much crap she wants to bring with her. We did a long weekend in DC once and she wanted to bring a cooler! Like there aren’t snacks available literally everywhere?
I was going to write what you did except for explaining it to dimwit coworkers. I’d complain like a sunofabitch and enjoy the entire experience. Depends on the roads if I go 8 to 16 hours driving and if an overnight is available during the 14+ hour trip.