A June 2007 story in U.S. News & World Report had mostly bad news for travelers intending to fly on business or on holiday this summer. Flight delays have increased and aircraft are more tightly packed with passengers than ever before. The news was worse for some than for others. The piece, which ranked major airports based on a combination of the percentage of flights delayed and the average load factor for departing aircraft, found the country's "most miserable" airport to be Detroit's Wayne County Airport.



Official Department of Transportation numbers support the bad rap for the Motor City. Thirty-nine percent of flights at Detroit leave the tarmac late. Combined with an average load factor of just under seventy-seven percent - meaning that passenger flights leaving Detroit are nearly 77 percent full - Detroit's airport serves up the most misery to the largest number of paying customers when flights miss their scheduled departure times.

Given the fact that I live near Detroit and make the occasional business trip to nearby Chicago or Cleveland, these statistics got me thinking about the advantages - if any - of traveling by car to these destinations. Thanks to some other advice in the article, it was quite easy for me to price and compare the cost of driving and flying to each of these cities.

The first step in the process was to visit fuelcostcalculator.com.

Maintained by the American Automobile Association (AAA), this site asks you to enter your starting point and final destination along with the make, model and year of manufacture of your vehicle. Using MPG estimates for your particular vehicle and the average gas price for your part of the country, the American Automobile Association's fuel cost calculator rapidly computes the distance, the quantity of fuel required and cost of that fuel for a typical drive from in my example - Detroit to Chicago. In my case, I learned that I could expect to consume 10.58 gallons of gas for the 275-mile trip to the Windy City at at a ballpark fuel cost at just over 33 dollars (33.23). The calculator also gave me the round-trip cost of the trip, in this case, 66.46.

To find out how this would compare to flying, I next pointed my Web browser to sidestep.com.

I like to use Sidestep because it scours hundreds of airline and discounted fare websites for the best deal and then lets me book directly with the airline company instead of using a go-between like Orbitz, Travelocity or Expedia. Dealing with the airline directly instead of through a third-party ticket broker, makes it easier and possibly less costly if fees are involved to rebook if necessary.

While visiting sidestep.com, I found an American Airlines non-stop flight that would whisk me from Detroit to Chicago on a Tuesday and return me the following Thursday at a total round-trip cost of 119.00 dollars. Not a bad price by any means, but still approximately twice as expensive as the cost of traveling by car. And the price did not reflect the cost of airport parking or any added airport fees or taxes.

Because I enjoy driving, the decision to drive to Chicago on my next business trip was an easy one. My route takes me right by the Detroit airport anyway and I'd rather spend my time driving through the scenic countryside of Western Michigan than battling long lines and possible delays at the airport. In addition, it's nice to have a familiar car in Chicago and also nice to save on the cost of a rental car.

Whether a decision like mine makes sense in your case depends to a large extent on your starting point and ultimate goal. While it's still very slightly cheaper for me to drive from Detroit to Los Angeles than it is to fly, for example, I'd never dream of making this long drive part of a business trip.

It's generally the shorter trips, on the order of 250 to 450 miles, where driving makes sense. Decide for yourself by comparing the cost of flying and the cost of driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Washington, D.C. to Boston, or Miami to Orlando using the tools available at fuelcostcalculator.com and sidestep.com.