To fly or to drive? What’s the cheaper option? What’s more time efficient?
Budget Travel’s Rachel Mosley and Peter look at Befrugal.com’s new fly or drive calculator for insights into the smartest option for different travel scenarios.
Peter Greenberg: To fly or drive? Give me a couple examples where the choice becomes easy or the choice is difficult.
Rachel Mosley: Sometimes it’s really easy to decide if you’re going to drive. Say you have say a really short trip, like New York to Philadelphia, you’re probably gong to drive. Or if you have a really long trip, like going across the country, you’re going to fly. With those in-between trips, it becomes more difficult to decide what is more cost and time efficient. For example, I tested the calculator with the New York to Boston trip. It takes about 4.5 to 5 hours to drive, which makes you wonder if it is just going to be easier to fly. Which is going to be cheaper? The price of airfares is rising, but so too is the price of gas. It’s hard to figure out the right thing to do.
PG: Tell me what happened.
RM: I tested it out. Driving won on cost, but flying won on time. The calculator also gives you your carbon dioxide impact. Flying actually won in terms of the environment, but it was by a slim margin.
PG: With Boston to New York or Washington D.C. to New York, there is always going to be a slim margin between flying and driving for a variety of reasons. When you add in the time it takes to get to the airport, stand in line, go through security, then sit on the runway at LaGuardia, is it really faster? And then you need to factor in if are you going by yourself or taking someone with you. The more people you add to the trip, the cheaper it is to drive.
RM: Exactly, the great thing about this calculator is that it takes all this into consideration. You’re able to calculate how many people you’re driving with. It asks you how you’re going to get to the airport, if that’s going to be an extra cost. Even if you’re driving, it calculates whether you’re going to be driving over night, and if so, how much your hotel stays are going to cost. With all this information aggregated in one place, you can feel more confident about your decision. You don’t feel like you’re wasting money as much.
PG: Do they throw in the train too?
RM: The train? No, they don’t. They also don’t mention the bus.
PG: Okay, fair enough. There are some airfare calculations these days that are so wacky. For example, the other day I was looking at New York to Miami. Now most people are not going to drive that but they assume the airfare is so expensive. The airfare from New York to Miami turned out to be $92.
RM: $92?
PG: $92. When it’s that cheap, it becomes a no-brainer and of course I’m going to fly. Yet there are some days where the airfare to Miami is $892. Same flight, same time, even. At that point, you should find four friends and drive.
RM: It does depend on a variety of factors. How many people you are traveling with? How close is your destination? Is this a spontaneous decision to travel? Is the trip something you’ve been planning ahead of time? Fares go up and down. You always have the option to drive. You need to figure out if you should book that plane ticket, and this calculator can help you make that decision because you can price out how much driving is going to cost and then compare it against air fares.
By Peter Greenberg for Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio.
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