Driving time threshold before flying

[Hetch]

Hello all,

First I would like to say that I love this forum. I read more than I post but as my purchase date nears of a new DA40, I anticipate to be amongst those who share information and experience for the benefit of others. )

My question to current plane owners is: Say you are planning a trip with your family and have a choice to make between driving or flying (assuming weather is perfect all around); What is the trip length threshold before you decide flying is the better option? I recognize the answer will include more than just the math of time and distances and that's ok. Flying is more fun so it doesn't have to make sense. After all if sense was at play, I suspect most of us would NOT be pilots lol.

I will have a 42ft wide hangar and trying to think what our behavior will be like once we have the plane. The airport where we keep the plane is 14 minutes away. We decided that a 1.5 hour driving trip is the cutoff. Curious how others feel.

Thanks!

[Steve]

Hetch:

Welcome to the forum. Since most of our trips are 11 hours plus (with a few 6 hour drives in between), it is no contest. The factors which might make me drive are trip longer than a week in length (and having to rent a car at the destination), or the necessity to carry more cargo than I can fit into the airplane.

Steve

[Chromer]

Hi Hetch,
I think each of us have a different time threshold. How long to get to the airport, get the plane ready and what about when you get to your destination, how are you going to get around? I just went away for the weekend, the flight was only 40 minutes one way and then taxi to the hotel. It was more expensive to fly than drive but for me and my wife it's about the adventure of getting there. I love the view from the air rather than on the ground.
Have fun flying.

Daryl

[Rick]

Welcome, Hetch! And congratulations on your new Diamond. I think the answer to your question is obvious - flying is ALWAYS the best choice!

Seriously, though - I find that sometimes the logistics at the destination plays as much or more of a role as the distance. For example, if we're visiting someone who can pick us up at the airport, we will fly no matter how far (or near!) it is. But, if we will have to rent a car at the destination and then drive some more to get there, or there is no good rental option at the closest airport, or rental cars are really expensive, etc. etc. we might drive even though it would be a bit faster to fly.

We live about 15 minutes from our airport, too. I can leave my garage and be rolling on the runway exactly one hour later, so you have to add that 'extra' time to the trip difference, plus whatever time you need on the other end to taxi and tie down, etc. I figure a couple hour driving time is probably a good 'break-even' point if you have transportation available at the other end, everything else being equal. But the FUN factor usually trumps all the other issues!

Edit: I see Daryl beat me to it. Ditto what he said!

[Charles]

Logistics at destination also includes the proximity of an airport to the final destination. For those of us who are not blessed with the abundance of airports enjoyed in the US, this can be an important limiting factor. Fees at the closest airport can also come into the equation. For example, landing fees, parking and a one day rental of a subcompact will cost over $100 at CYQB. And weather, of course, is another consideration, even if flying IFR (icing, thunderstorms, fog, etc.).

[Hetch]

Thank you all for your responses.

I incorrectly stated I'll be getting a new DA40 (I wish!). What I meant was I will be getting a used DA40 which will be a new for me lol. It will be my first aircraft purchase. I plan to VLOG the trip to pickup and back. Probably a few months away.

I keep a mental note of all the ways a plane could've come in handy. One was flying my daughter to DC for her week long summer program (we live in PA). The other is a business trip my wife had to take which is 3 driving hours a way.

It is a shame flying is so expensive. It shouldn't be but that is a topic for a different thread.

Thank you all again for sharing

[Colin]

We live 14 minutes from the tie-down at the Santa Monica airport. With the DA40 it was a 45 minute flight to Santa Barbara, although you landed north of town, had to rent a car and drive fifteen to twenty minutes back down. It is an hour and a half drive.

I *never* drove once I had the plane. I think you can tell it was (at best) a wash on the time. But being in the sky, watching the coast slide by below us, it made whatever that trip was for SO much better.

[Rich]

All good points to consider. For us, the drive time to the airport hasn't often mattered in years. Both when we lived on Whidbey Island and now near Prineville, Oregon, we almost always have had to drive right past the airport(s) to go to or come back from where we're actually heading. An interesting quirk, there.

In some cases surface travel times are all out of proportion to the raw distance.

We've had occasion to fly from one end of SEA Class B to the other, rather than drive to my brother and sister-in-law's to avoid things like Thanksgiving Day traffic.

We have friends in Victoria, BC that we'd fly to visit. That's an almost all-day trip, each way, but about 40 minutes (plus getting to the airport). And surface trip timing is dictated by ferry schedules, whereas flying is done on our own whim. Even now, it's about a 3-hour excursion to fly there and we'd barely be to Portland by that time driving.

And there have been times when flying conditions (cold clear day after a winter storm) are better than road conditions (icy, chain-up requirements, gravel flying all around, scary traffic accidents).

[CFIDave]

Here's a very unusual example from a few weeks ago that breaks normal fly vs. drive distance rules:

I needed to attend a dinner in Baltimore; I happened to be doing some maintenance on my plane that day, so I was already out at the Leesburg, VA (a northwestern suburb of Washington, DC) airport KJYO.

To drive during rush hour around the northern stretch of the DC Beltway (I-495) to Tipton Airport, Ft. Meade, MD (KFME) where my wife would pick me up -- only 37 nm but with ridiculous traffic -- would take more than 2 hours!!!

So I flew for all of 15 minutes from KJYO to KFME.

Just to fly VFR I had to file a DC Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) flight plan, get a transponder code, talk to Potomac Approach, and fly at only 1400 feet MSL most of the way to stay underneath the 1500 foot Dulles and BWI Bravo shelves. I also had to carefully go around the DC Flight Restricted Zone (FRZ) by flying just to the north of it. And I got to do the same thing in reverse to go home after dinner, but all in the dark while avoiding some tall towers.

The marginal cost of flying my DA42 twin (including engine reserves, oil changes, etc.) burning JetA is only $91/hour. So the entire round trip cost me only about $45, plus a $15 ramp fee charged by Tipton Airport.

There was only one disadvantage to flying rather than driving: I couldn't have any drinks with dinner!

[Rich]

... I couldn't have any drinks with dinner!

There is that