Sometimes It’s Cheaper to Fly

Who knew?

I am always under the impression that air travel is inherently more expensive. It feels like it should be because air travel gets you more places faster and with much more efficiency than a train or a car; things that are efficient and fast are often more expensive.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that somehow, it is cheaper to fly to get to Martha’s Vineyard for three days than it is to drive.

Some friends have recently moved to Martha’s Vineyard, preferring to hunker down for the winter with family and raise their baby there for a while instead of paying a lot of money for childcare and dealing with the inconvenience of the city when you have a child. From what I can tell, they’re lonely. It seems like it’s been hard. When a visit was suggested for a long weekend in April, it seemed like a great idea at the time.

“We have to figure out how to get there,” I said. “It’s really far.”

“Just fly to Boston and we’ll pick you up,” my friends said. “It can’t be that expensive. Just look into it and see.”

Hopping on a plane and flying to a destination where people go for expensive summer vacations and chowder sounds like it would be prohibitively expensive, but I was pleased to discover that right now, flights are very cheap. Getting to Martha’s Vineyard from New York means renting a car, driving for six hours to Wood’s Hole, paying money to put your car on the ferry and then arriving 8 hours later. There’s a ferry that runs direct in the summer, but right now, in the early spring, the Vineyard isn’t the hot spot it would be in June or July.

The bus is almost as hellish as the car, if not worse, and while it’s the cheapest option by far, I’m not going to do it. A car rental for four days would be around $400, not including gas and tolls and various packages of beef jerky purchased from gas stations on the way. Putting the car on the boat is extra. Split between three people, the potential cost of a weekend away before the costs of the vacation itself are already high. So, we looked at a plane ticket because it’s nice to feel fancy and my goodness, it was cheap.

A round trip ticket to Boston costs $97. The flight is an hour and change and we will be scooped up by our friend who will drive us to the ferry, put the car on the ferry and take us to their house. I can wake up at a reasonable hour and get in a cab and go to the airport without having to spend the better part of a day in a car. I will go see a baby that I genuinely like, hang out with my friends and walk on a beach, probably. It’ll be nice and cheap, just how I like it.

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