When It’s Cheaper to Drive Than to Fly in the U.S. This Holiday Season
Photo Credit: Highway 1 in California. Flickr / Thibault Martin-Lagardette
Skift Take
Rock, paper, scissors: The road trip, including an Uber, beats flying in a lot of cases for shorter holiday trips in December 2014. Still, under many scenarios, we'd prefer to see you at Gate A11.
U.S. airlines have been adverse to passing along fuel savings to travelers in the form of reduced airfares, and with gasoline prices at their lowest in three years, travelers will find that it is much cheaper to drive than to fly over the Christmas break to certain destinations, especially for distances around 2,500 miles or less.
Conversely, for longer trips such as Chicago to Phoenix or Miami to Chicago, it can be cheaper to fly than to drive or the difference isn't much this Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza season.
Of course this is all based on purchasing just one flight ticket. If a group or family is purchasing three, four or more airline tickets, then the cost savings to drive would skew more dramatically toward the automobile.
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