Is it smarter (and cheaper) to fly or drive?

By Scott McCredie

As airfares and airport security measures have climbed in the past year, many more travelers are facing the quandary of whether to fly or drive to their destinations, especially to cities within a "drivable" distance.

With so many variables to consider, it's often a hard decision to make. Is there an easy and reliable way to make the call? And at what distance from your point of origin do the time and cost of the two modes of travel break even? Some of the answers below may surprise you.

Conventional wisdom holds that for nearby destinations -- say, within 200 miles -- it's much cheaper to drive than to fly, and that's generally true. From Tucson to Phoenix (100 miles) or Baltimore to Philadelphia (also 100 miles), it costs about half as much to drive as to fly -- if airfare is purchased at least seven days in advance, of course, and you get a free ride to and from the airport.

Let's take the Tucson-Phoenix route as an example:

• Advance-purchase round-trip airfare, leaving March 6 and returning March 9: $200. (All fares in this story were found on Expedia.com on Jan. 8.)
• Cost of driving 200 miles round trip: $97. (Auto expenses in this story are based on the Internal Revenue Service's 2007 mileage deduction of 48.5 cents per mile.)

What about the time difference between the two modes of travel? Clint Walls, a Tucson, Ariz., resident for 13 years, figured it took him 15 minutes to get from his home to the Tucson airport, where he usually arrived 40 minutes before the flight. Add that to the 50-minute flight time to Phoenix, and he was up to an hour and 45 minutes -- a wash compared to the 1.5 to two hours for driving.

If friends invited him to Phoenix for some spur-of-the-moment activity, he would usually drive to avoid exorbitant walk-up ticket prices. But if he could plan well ahead of time and pay the normal fare, it was worth the extra cost to fly because then he wouldn't have to "stay awake for one of the straightest, most boring 100 mile stretches of expressway in existence."

As Walls discovered, the "race" between driving and flying is like the proverbial tortoise-and-hare competition -- at least up to a point. Cars start the journey earlier, plug along at slower pace and have the advantage of taking you straight to your destination at the other end. Planes require a lot of waiting around before and after flights, though once you're in the air, of course, the pace is much faster. The break-even point for time appears to be around 100 miles on up to about 300 miles, as the example below shows:

Chicago (O'Hare) to Detroit

• Getting to the airport: 45 minutes (estimate).
• Airport wait time: two hours before departure (though many frequent fliers are comfortable getting there one hour beforehand, as their VIP privileges allow them to easily circumvent long security lines).
• Flight time: one hour, 15 minutes.
• Airport arrival wait time: 30 minutes.
• Time to get to destination from airport: 45 minutes.

• Total time for flying: five hours, 15 minutes each way.
• Cost to fly: $123 for a round-trip, advance-purchase flight, $78 for airport parking (assuming three days at O'Hare's midrange price), $15 in auto expenses for a 30-mile round-trip drive between home and the airport, and $60 (estimate) for transportation at your destination (assuming no rental car is needed). Total: $276.
• Driving time: 4.5 hours each way to drive 280 miles at roughly 60 mph.
• Driving cost: $272 for a round trip (48.5 cents per mile).

New York (Kennedy) to Cleveland

Beyond 300 miles, the hare begins to win the race, against both the clock and the bank. The farther one travels, the more the hare triumphs. For the 514-mile New York-to-Cleveland route, driving would cost substantially more, especially if fliers don't need to rent a car upon arrival, and take twice as long as going by plane.

• Time: six hours each way to fly, 9.5 hours each way to drive (8.5 hours at 60 mph and with an hourlong break).
• Cost: $263 to fly -- $143 for round-trip airfare (nonstop, advance purchase), $45 for three days of airport parking (midrange price at Kennedy airport), $15 in auto expenses between home and the airport, and $60 (estimate) for transportation at your destination (assuming no rental car is needed) -- versus $499 to drive round trip.

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