driving vs flying--driving is getting more appealing

I used to use the rule of thumb any drive less than 7-8 hours was better than the hassle and dread of airports and changing planes etc… but with the more snafus and TSA lines at the airport I think I am going to adjust the rule of thumb up to under 9-10 hour drive is better than flying. Am I wrong?

I think a lot depends on where you are driving, when, and your age.

I won’t do a 9-10 hour drive from CT to Ohio any kee…and esoecially not in the winter.

I’ll just adjust the time I arrive at the airport.

We have been doing a lot of driving (and much less flying) in recent years. From Charlotte NC we routinely drive to Boston. (2 days) We recently went on a roadtrip with stops in Gainesville Florida and Fairhope Alabama. (1000 miles total) We flew to Arizona (didn’t have time to drive). We like having a car when we “get there” vs renting, and we also have been taking our dog with us a lot. She does great in the car, obviously creates challenges in accomodations and activities, but it is hard to leave her also. As for your calculation, I think a lot of it depends on how long you are going to stay. A 10 hour drive for a 1 day visit? (and a 10 hour return) That would be tough to justify.

I might actually break up a 10 hour drive with an overnight at a holiday inn if I got tired or antsy. CT to OH in the winter would not be a “fun” drive.

Depends on how you feel about driving. I love to drive (and actually driving not just riding as passenger in a car). Some of the best memories I have with my kids is taking long family vacations in the car. Great conversations that were as enjoyable as the destination. Though my kids are great in the car. Read books, play video games, watch movies and otherwise keep themselves entertained. So it is easy.

We drove out to Yellowstone a few years ago. 30+ hours each way. Allowed us to see Mt Rushmore and homestead of Laura Engel Wilder (wife and daughter are huge Little House fans). And stop in Chicago for a college visit. On the way home, we drove straight to Minneapolis, spent a day there and then drove home (each leg was 15 hours – I drove all but 4 hours on that trip).

But I have friends who think anything over 5 hours requires a flight. Depends on the people involved IMO.

at around five hours I would be a little anxious to get out of the car but, 5-6 hours you come out ahead both in time and hassle by driving. you leave when you want and skip all of the airport nonsense …so 5-6 hours is a drive 100% of the time.

Two of my kids went to college 9-10 hours away by car in a town that didn’t offer good options for flying home. It gradually occurred to us that, once we factored in time to the airport, getting through security, layovers and the inevitable delays, it usually took the same amount of time for them to drive here as to fly. There was some worry about them being on the road for so long, but there was worry involved with making connections and the occasional cancelation, too.

Nowadays I prefer not to drive more than 6-7 hours a day if I’m alone, and I like doing an overnight stopover when I can. Sometimes flying really is the only option.

I live in SoCal, and the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway is so stunning that I prefer that to flying. But when we need to travel the same distance else where, flying is better to get a boring trip over with. LAX is a pretty ugly airport, but the TSA lines are never nightmares like we hear about in Denver and Chicago. So…depends, I guess!

I’ve always loved driving but now it depends on how much time I have. D and I just drove from FL to Dallas breaking it up and spending the night in MS. At 9 hours I start to get restless. I’m flying back tomorrow morning but not worried about the lines - flying out of Love is a breeze.

Flying hasn’t been fun for years. I remember when it used to be THE way to travel. No longer. Having to be at the airport way in advance, security lines, delays, the rarity of direct flights, cramped seats even in business class, blah. We drive whenever we can, even if it’s longer. We have a second home down south, about 900 miles, and we always drive. It also allows for travel on our own schedule, not the airline’s, which never seems to keep to the scheduled times anyway. Plus my H loves to drive and we have great cars for travel, so it’s really a no-brainer for us.

We really don’t have options from HI, so we fly–that’s the only way to and from HI, other than boats/cruises. We do try do stick with nonstops to minimize hassles and find that works well for us. Generally, we prefer not driving more than 4 hours/day, as we find it too exhausting and break it up with a stop when it’s that far/long.

Global entry and pre-check really makes a HUGE difference. We LOVE it as it saves us time and aggravation at TSA. It was the best $100 for 5 years we’ve spent!

I’m totally not a road trip person. Six hours in a car is about my limit before I go stir crazy. I actually do a fair number of short-hop (1 hour) flights for work that would about a 6 hour drive. I definitely take the plane over the car, but then my airport is not difficult to navigate and TSA lines aren’t too bad.

Like @JenJenJenJen, we have not seen the long TSA lines at LAX that we are hearing about. We flew in and out out of JFK a few weeks ago and saw no lines there either. We are a little less than an hour from LAX w/o traffic, but with traffic it can easily be a 2 hour drive. By the time we park and allow extra time for the so-far non-existent long lines, it can easily add 4 hours to the flight. Add that to the time on the other end to off-load, and rent a car, I would probably not fly for any less than an 8-10 hour drive. (We also love the Pacific Coast Highway, but it adds a lot of extra time if we are heading to Northern Calif. so we rarely take it unless we are camping along the coast). 2 of our kids are OOS, so we fly to see them. One is in San Diego, which again is less than a 3 hour drive without traffic but can jump up to 5 hours mid-day. We just always leave early in the morning and come back late in the evening. I don’t enjoy flying that much and really like road trips, but often it is a matter of having to take extra time off of work for a long road trip.

Our daughter will be almost exactly 500 miles from our home in the fall. I have made the 1000-mile round trip multiple times, because our older son considered attending the same school. When we drove there in April for Accepted Students Day, I kept track of the cost of gas - $88! Not bad. There were also tolls, but it’s still cheap.

The main thing I do to make the drive easier is to leave around 3 am. That gets us through the big cities in Connecticut before morning rush hour. We stop for breakfast around 8 am and arrive at the school at noon.

Yes, timing and traffic of road trips can REALLY make a difference. It also makes a difference as to what flights you book and how early you arrive for flights. We often book early morning flights and get there 2 hours prior to flight so have less stress making the flight.

The pre-check area of TSA tends to be less crazed as well.

I just flew for the first time with pre-check, and it definitely improved the experience.

My daughters both flew home this weekend. D2’s flight was delayed approximately 3 hours on Friday afternoon and then, once it landed, there was an hour-long wait for a gate and exiting the plane. D1’s flight this morning was delayed more than an hour. The plane taxied and was shown as having departed but then D1 texted me and said they had been told the plane was out of service. But nothing else. Eventually, she got back to me and said that they were going to fly on that plane. That made me (and probably her) kind of nervous but I didn’t want to go into the topic of the plane’s condition. But for a 1,000-mile one-way trip and with limited time, the options are few.

I feel like “on time departure” measurements have really resulted in some bad behavior by airlines. Last week I got on a flight where they said at the gate that it had a mechanical problem, but the mechanics were onsite to look at it. So they were going to load the plane so they could push back as soon as the problem was fixed. So… they loaded the plane. And then we sat at the gate for 2 hours. They gave us a blow-by-blow account of getting additional contract mechanics, needing to get a tool, then it was the wrong tool for the job, etc. It was nuts. They never should have loaded the plane until it was fixed. I was on the flight through a stop to its final destination, and had nothing but peanuts for over a 6 hour stretch. Made me pretty grouchy.

Then on the way home, they pulled back from the gate, but stopped after 50 feet. Announced that there were two airline employees who HAD to get to our destination airport, and they were going back to the gate to pick them up. So we pulled back to the gate, and waited 15 minutes for these two guys (mechanics) to board the flight. Grrr.

I couldn’t have driven instead of flying, it was a trip of over 800 miles for a weekend with one of my kids. And well worth the hassles, honestly. But sheesh.

I just flew pre-check officially for the first time and the line was longer than the regular line. That’s what I get for flying on a Tuesday morning from a small airport.

I think the difference is just so variable. Do I want to drive on I-95 anywhere from Richmond to Boston? Oh, no. I would choose flying over a drive where you’re bound to hit rush hour traffic in several places. Especially if you can do something really civilized and take a commuter train right to the airport, book a nonstop flight, and have another good public transit option waiting at your destination airport. Public transit can be especially good near holidays where you’ll wait 45 minutes just to get your car up to the airport pick up area with the other 2000 people who are picking up Grandma.

That being said, I recently drove D3 back from school and some of it was so easy, so relaxing, and so beautiful that it was a real pleasure. No worries about making a deadline and having to pick a day weeks in advance to get a reasonable rate. No worries about stuffing 80 pounds worth of knives, if that’s what you have, into your luggage. But you can’t do this everywhere and I’m not the type to get up at 3 AM to beat traffic.

I’m flying the dreaded Jet Blue/JFK combo in a few days, giving Jet Blue one more time to get it right. It should be interesting!

I love to drive and love a road trip. And I too would rather be the driver than a passenger. But I plan our road trips out well and factor in a little time to just take a detour and go explore some place that looks interesting. I am tired of airports and if its non-business travel I will drive if it is at all feasible.

My S and H have done a cross country trip in early June for the last 2 years going from our home out west back to the east coast for the summer. This year since my S is now an experienced driver they will do the trip with both Jeeps so my S has a car for the summer. S use to binge watch Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Dives and Drive-In’s” where he visits the “best of’s” for burgers, pizza and other fast food. They map out a few of those places and break up the trip with stops at those restaurants. That’s one road trip I pass on!