How far do you drive to catch your flights?

[yayasue]

Hi Everyone,

Prices from Montreal or Burlington march break are ridiculously high so we are looking for alternatives.. Looking at Manchester NH, Boston MA, Syracuse NY or Buffalo NY. Ranging from 4 to 6 hour drive.

Just curious if others drive long distances to save on flights?

 

[greenclan67]

Well I might be one that drives the furthest. We are on Manitoulin Island. So for us, Sault ste marie, ont is 3.5 hours closest border crossing. So we would look at Flint( we r flying from there at xmas, 8 hour drive) or grand rapids. Buffalo is about 7.5 from us. We are flying from there in March. But we make it part of our vacation. It saves us $2000 driving to the US to fly.

 

[lady_bug_888]

Hi Everyone,

Prices from Montreal or Burlington march break are ridiculously high so we are looking for alternatives.. Looking at Manchester NH, Boston MA, Syracuse NY or Buffalo NY. Ranging from 4 to 6 hour drive.

Just curious if others drive long distances to save on flights?

We drive 8-9 hours to fly from calgary. It saves us about $2000.

 

[disneymath]

Within the last few years, a RT flight from home for the 8 of us came up at $8000ish, Toronto (8 hour drive) was $5000 and Buffalo (another 3 hours max drive) was $1800ish ... We drove the 11 hours to Buffalo, stayed overnight on each end, did some outlet shopping and still came out ahead!

Recently, the deals out of BUF haven't been as great, but still worth considering.

 

[Ted in Halifax]

I usually drive 9 to 10 hours to Portland Maine, or 10 to 11 hours to Manchester, Boston is 12 and once I drove to Providence Rhode Island which is 12.5 hours. I would drive 6 hours is a heart beat for cheap fares. Note that I usually fly 4 or 5 people, I wouldn't do this drive for two people.

To get to me to fly out of the US, the fares need to be $250 or lower. The further south I drive, the lower the fare.

Ted

 

[Sprockie]

Hi Everyone,

Prices from Montreal or Burlington march break are ridiculously high so we are looking for alternatives.. Looking at Manchester NH, Boston MA, Syracuse NY or Buffalo NY. Ranging from 4 to 6 hour drive.

Just curious if others drive long distances to save on flights?

Have you considered Southwest out of Albany NY? They have some good prices right now and many non-stop flights to Orlando.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

We drive about 3 hours to Syracuse. We have also made the 4 hour journey to fly from Buffalo. From our door to Pearson in Toronto is 2 hours plus....partly due to traffic. We are located about 45 minutes west of Kingston.

Flights for August 2014, though, are almost as expensive out of SYR via JetBlue as they are out of Toronto via Air Canada . Now, we have TrueBlue points that will make one way free for two of us, but otherwise.......we would be saving almost nothing to fly from Syracuse (unless prices decrease once Southwest releases their schedule). Flights from Buffalo are even more expensive than AC or Air Transat from YYZ..... nonstop are $270 BUF-MCO, and $345 MCO-BUF .

Flying from a smaller airport, though, is so much more relaxing than dealing with the pandemonium at Pearson. And we much prefer clearing customs in the car at the border than at the airport. So there are more pro's for us than just price.

 

[I Run Long]

We drive about an hour to the ferry, take a 2 hour ferry ride from Sidney to Anacortes in Washington state, then just over 2 hours to Seattle. We usually overnight in Seattle and fly out the next morning. On the reverse, we hit the outlet mall before the ferry in Anacortes. We save about $2500 for a family of 4 doing it this way. Crazy expensive to fly off of Vancouver Island which, once you are in the air, is about 30 minutes to Seattle from Victoria. Don't know why I have to pay $2500 just for that!? Well worth it for us.

 

[Lizard Valley]

I am also in Montreal, and was looking at these options just this morning. YUL-Mco is upwards of 560$ whether on Air Canada (direct) or on Delta (with a US connection). Alb-Mco on SW is still ridiculously high (422$) considering we'd have to drive 3.5 hrs and pay for parking. Another 40 mins drive and we could leave from Manchester NH and get the round trip for 317$. Plus parking, plus stress if a snow storm comes through.

Is it worth it? Not sure...it's what I'm trying to decide right now. In the past I've been able to get something out of YUL for under 400$. It just hasn't happened this year, and I've been checking since April! I just might cancel the trip this year. fP+ is making Disney this year even less attractive

 

[100acrewoodfan]

We live NB and we travel to Manchester NH for our flights, approx 6-7 hours.

 

[dsneygirl]

90 min to BUF. Pearson is about 45min but we never even look. We prefer the small airport and ease of travel.

 

[Tiggs14]

We fly out of Buffalo. It's a 90 minute drive for us.

I'm not sure I'd do it if the drive time was 4 to 6 hours though.

 

[dancin Disney style]

We are about to 90 min. to BUF and 30ish to YYZ but most of the time we fly from BUF. We don't really care which airport we go to. I think the maximum drive time I could talk DH into would be about 3hrs. Any more than that and he would want to drive all the way to FL.

 

[The Lorax]

Hi Everyone,

Prices from Montreal or Burlington march break are ridiculously high so we are looking for alternatives.. Looking at Manchester NH, Boston MA, Syracuse NY or Buffalo NY. Ranging from 4 to 6 hour drive.

Just curious if others drive long distances to save on flights?

We are driving to Boston (~7 hrs) but usually fly from Portland. We were able to secure 236 return taxes inc for direct flights on JetBlue. Dates are Feb 27 - Mar 9, we booked on first day of the dates opening up, we are now glad we did!

Sent from my HTC Incredible S using DISBoards

 

[caisland]

We are from PEI so pretty much the same distance as Ted.
Drove to Manchester in 2008 and 2009.
Just two of us in 2012 and we sat in Toronto for 5 hours thinking that if we drove to Manchester we'd be there by now............

 

[DLfan4]

We drive 4 hours to get to Fargo.

 

[The Lorax]

We are from PEI so pretty much the same distance as Ted.
Drove to Manchester in 2008 and 2009.
Just two of us in 2012 and we sat in Toronto for 5 hours thinking that if we drove to Manchester we'd be there by now............

I've had that happen more than once @ Pearson!

Sent from my HTC Incredible S using DISBoards

 

[alc571]

45 minutes to Toronto. We flew once from Detroit (a 4 hour drive), but that was only because we are Tiger fans and caught a game the night before we left. After flying from LA for 5 hours, and then driving for 4 hours, we vowed we would NEVER do that again. I understand that you can save a lot of money by flying from Buffalo or Detroit to Orlando, but by the time I got to Buffalo, I could BE in Orlando! No thank you... I'd rather pay more, and drive less. I can't believe some of you driving 9, 10, 12 hours to an airport! If I was driving that long, I'd just drive to Florida!

 

[mab2012]

Flights for August 2014, though, are almost as expensive out of SYR via JetBlue as they are out of Toronto via Air Canada . Now, we have TrueBlue points that will make one way free for two of us, but otherwise.......we would be saving almost nothing to fly from Syracuse (unless prices decrease once Southwest releases their schedule). Flights from Buffalo are even more expensive than AC or Air Transat from YYZ..... nonstop are $270 BUF-MCO, and $345 MCO-BUF .

Same deal at March break. In the end I opted for direct flights (AC/WestJet) out of Montreal (2h drive) over JetBlue from Syracuse (3.5h drive), because the prices weren't much different and the flight times suited me better. FWIW, the JetBlue prices didn't drop when the SW schedule was released.

I would consider SW from Rochester (>4h), if the price was right. Looked at a few other options in the range of a 5-6h drive, but the savings would have to be pretty significant for us to consider a drive of that length.

A couple of years ago we flew on JetBlue from Syracuse and paid less than half of the best price I could find in Ottawa or Montreal. It was around $325pp return. Would love to see those prices come back!

 

[mab2012]

45 minutes to Toronto. We flew once from Detroit (a 4 hour drive), but that was only because we are Tiger fans and caught a game the night before we left. After flying from LA for 5 hours, and then driving for 4 hours, we vowed we would NEVER do that again. I understand that you can save a lot of money by flying from Buffalo or Detroit to Orlando, but by the time I got to Buffalo, I could BE in Orlando! No thank you... I'd rather pay more, and drive less. I can't believe some of you driving 9, 10, 12 hours to an airport! If I was driving that long, I'd just drive to Florida!

Unfortunately not everyone lives 45 minutes from a major hub. For those in more remote locations, the choices are probably something like this:

1. Drive maybe 2-4 hours or more to the closest airport, then pay a mint for indirect flights that might include long layovers. Total travel time could easily be in the range of 10-12 hours, maybe more.

2. Drive 6-8+ hours to an airport that offers reasonably priced direct flights. Total travel time is probably still in the range of 10-12 hours, at a substantially lower cost.

3. Drive 30+ hours to Orlando. Each way. Maybe with 2 or 3 bored, screaming kids in the backseat.

None of the options are especially palatable, but I can see door number 2 being the lesser evil for many, especially where multiple kids are involved.