It's really cheaper to fly than drive.
An exercise in math and pricing.
A Round-trip jaunt from New York, NY to Los Angeles.
By Car:
-
NY-LA-NY = 5,652 road miles. (Travel time about 4 days, 2 hrs. Cost does not include Hotels or meals)
- Traveling
5,652 miles in a car with an average of
27.5 MPG (CAFE passenger car avg) will consume
205.5 Gallons of Gasoline
-
205.5 Gallons of Gas at US Avg. price of
$2.55 =
$524.00 By Air:
- NY-LA-NY Roundtrip quote by
America West ( about 15 hrs Flying time) on 8/16/05 =
$488.00 As of today, flying NY-LA-NY is
3 1/2 days faster and $36.00 cheaper (on average).
7 Comments +
And yes, I know that airfares are fickle and that high-traffic routes are often discounted. As I said, this is just an exercise in math, using current averages.
Even cheaper is to go Amtrak (coach). Round-trip NY to LA via Chicago is $344, though it takes at least as much time as driving. Ugh.
Hey Alan -- True, but you don't include opportunity cost in your measure. Assuming, for the sake of argument, you bill out at $1,000 a day, then four days in a car just cost you $4,000; fifteen hours in a plane is only $625. For most business sorts the opportunity cost of lost time dwarfs the gas/airfare.
Cheers
a note from europe: buy that amount of gasoline in euroe (in austria to be exact) and you'll pay $1,058. quite rightly so, as i believe. energy is too cheap in the US.
And you're assuming the driver will not eat, drink or sleep.
nice man ....you doing well job
I have been trying to figure if it is cheaper to fly versus drive and kept getting killed when I calculated the need for a rental car and then getting whacked for filling the tank. Especially if you pay for a full tank from the rental agency or leave it empty and get charged a bundle.
I think at this writing 6/18/07 the gas average is around $3.90.
