The holiday season is set to kick off with the long Thanksgiving weekend, and many of us are weighing our travel options.
Nearly everyone is going somewhere, and if that somewhere is more than just a few hours away, the big question quickly boils down to two options: fly or drive?
There is plenty of tricky travel calculus to compute when weighing your options. Among the factors, gas prices have been declining in recent months, while airline prices have ticked upward.
That’s why Military Times teamed up with the number crunchers at Priceline.com to help you get started. We computed basic travel costs from three major military hubs — San Diego, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. — out to five major hometown metro areas, all within about two days’ drive.
Chart: Flying vs. driving for holiday travel
Of course, every situation is different, but we hope these examples, with airfares generated on Nov. 18, will give you at least a sense of the basic costs you’ll be looking at for trips over both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Bottom line up front: For most trips, you’ll be better off driving — at least price-wise. Thanksgiving tickets are already spiking. If you’re traveling alone for the Christmas holidays, prices get closer between driving and flying, but as soon as you factor in a spouse and/or kids, for many it will quickly become far more cost-effective to drive, even considering long hauls in which you’d need to break up the drive and bed down for the night.
Of course, when every leave day counts, the extra cost of flying may be a small price to pay for the added time back home.
U.S. service members are seen entering and leaving the United Service Organization at the Baltimore Washington International airport June 5, 2012.
Photo Credit: Sr. Airman Kenneth Norman/Air Force
For example, if you’re stationed in the Washington, D.C., area, the best roundtrip ticket to New York City we could find leaving Nov. 22 and returning Nov. 28 was $286. The same ticket to make it home for Christmas was $139.
While your total flight time there and back will be about 2.5 hours, you’ll spend just over seven hours in the car, but pay only about $50 in gas.
To drive to Orlando, you’re looking at spending 30 hours in the car with about $200 in gas bills. A roundtrip ticket for Thanksgiving, however, will cost about $450, and for Christmas, about $400.
“Based on the amount of leave you have, it’s going to be a hard choice for some itineraries,” says Priceline analyst Brian Ek. “The big difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas airfares is mostly due to the fact that Thanksgiving isn’t far away. Once you get within 21 days of a scheduled flight, the fares usually start a steady creep up.”
Comparing the same five itineraries in our chart leaving from Washington, D.C., prices jumped an average of 50 percent between Nov. 13 and Nov. 18.
“My only recommendation is that for Christmas, that 21-day rule will most definitely apply. So, if you like a fare and decide you want to fly, I’d grab it now,” Ek says.
Our chart estimates a vehicle getting 25 miles per gallon, with gas prices pinned to a national average of $2.94 per gallon, based on the most recent Lundberg Survey of some 2,500 U.S. gas stations.
The driving estimates do not include the cost of tolls, potential repairs, food or mid-trip hotel accommodations or how long your various pit stops or detours might take along the way.
Priceline gave us the lowest airfares pulled from their search engine, with no restrictions on departure times or layovers.
“Generally, as each holiday gets closer and the pickings get slimmer, you’re likely to encounter more connections and down time, Ek says.
The air travel times factor only time in the air and layovers, so you’ll need to consider drive time to the airport, making it through security, and — on the other side — waiting on baggage and whatever drive remains to family and friends at your final destination. You also should factor in the cost of meals, transportation to and from the airport, parking, and other any other costs.
