Flying vs driving costs
To complement the Herald’s flying Air New Zealand vs driving costs for various NZ cities, I thought I’d work out similar comparisons for the Pacific Northwest, where I used to live. It’s a reasonable comparison — both have relatively sparsely spaced cities, though the roads are better there.
I used Alaska Airlines for the flying costs; they are the main local airline in the region. The costs are the cheapest flight on a random weekday in September — there will be some days and seasons when it’s cheaper or more expensive. The driving cost is based on the actual driving distance, not the straight-line distance, and uses the cost per mile specified for business tax deductions.
| from | to | distance (km) | US$flying | US$driving | NZ$flying | NZ$driving | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seattle | Portland | 278 | 368 | 97 | 438 | 116 |
| 2 | Seattle | Spokane | 449 | 398 | 157 | 474 | 187 |
| 3 | Seattle | Calgary | 1146 | 455 | 401 | 542 | 478 |
| 4 | Seattle | Kelowna | 507 | 440 | 177 | 524 | 211 |
| 5 | Portland | Kelowna | 785 | 487 | 275 | 580 | 327 |
| 6 | Spokane | Calgary | 698 | 581 | 244 | 692 | 291 |
The results aren’t that different from NZ, except that the impact of competition is clearer: the Seattle–Calgary flight is much less expensive that you’d predict from the others, probably because there lots of one-stop alternatives via Vancouver.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »