How far do you drive to fly?

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ethosunum

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EthosUnum
Looking at KGAI flying club post in classifieds has gotten me wondering.

How far do some of you drive to get to your airport of choice?
Is travel for training different than travel for your own flying?

Disclaimer: I'm right in the middle between KJYO and KHEF. So I have two GA airports within 30 minutes, each having at least 3 rental/school companies(2 companies have locations at both airports, so its closer to 4 unique entities). As I only have 15 hours towards my primary, I don't have much experience to know what the rest of the country is like.
 
I live about where you did. I used to fly out of HEF when I was renting originally. I then joined a (long gone) flying club at IAD. Talk about convenience. When I bought my plane, I kept it for the first couple of years at IAD and then moved to VKX (which had cheap fuel through a fuel club plus my mechanic was there). Took me about 35-40 minutes to get over there.

I was there until 9-11 and evacuated to OKV where I was until my engine failure. When I got my plane out of restoration after that, a hangar opened up for me at CJR (which is where my new mechanic is, he's another Navion guy). It takes me an hour to drive to CJR to fly.

Now I commute between my house in Chantilly and the CJR hangar to my house in NC which I don't even have to go outside to get to my airplane (the hangar is part of the house).
 
Right now it's 40-45 minutes, further than I'd like.

Planning on moving back toward town, it would become a more comfortable 25 minutes for one airport and about 15 for another.
 
From the office, it's null. We are across the street from the airport and our hangar.

From the house, 5-8 minutes.

I should add...we've got 3 more GA airports within a 30 minute drive, another 6 within an hour drive, and a lot more within a 2 hour drive.
 
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My drive is about 15 minutes to my hangar, so I have no complaints.
 
About 40 minutes. I have 2 airports closer, but I'm happy were I'm at.
 
About 7-8 minutes by driving; 15 minutes by bicycle.
 
Closest airport to me is technically KCGS, but I used to rent from KJYO (~1 hour) and now I fly from KGAI (~40 minutes). It sucks, but what can you do.
 
45mins-1h15, depending on traffic (Manhattan out to part of Long Island)
 
45 seconds by car, 5 minutes by walk, 3 minutes by ski.

I named the road I live on Downwind Court because my house is the exact turning point from the 45 to downwind for rwy 25.

Jim

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ORF (where I keep the Baron) is about 10 min from home/work.

CPK (where the Waco lives) is 35-40 min. ORF is unfortunately not a friendly environmnet for the biplane for a variety of reasons.
 
35 minutes, closer AP is only 10 but would cost me about $400 more per month, for that kind of change I'll drive the extra miles
 
ethosunum said:
Looking at KGAI flying club post in classifieds has gotten me wondering.

How far do some of you drive to get to your airport of choice?
Is travel for training different than travel for your own flying?
Click to expand...

2 miles
 
about 45 minutes in moderate traffic - kinda sucks but hangars a 1/2 the cost of closer airports which are 20 to 30 minutes away
 
About 5 minutes, and that is due to multiple signals. I live about a mile from my home airport, MYF. On the departure side too, so I always get to see all the planes taking off from my house.

-Brian
 
Hours. Closest flying site is 45 minutes away. I bring my flying machine with me and chase the sun(wind usually.)
 
3-3.5 hours, which is why I am considering a GA airplane...... ;)
 
Where I rent from is about 50 minutes away. There are 3 GA friendly airports closer, but since I started out going for my sport license before I decided to just got for the full private the airport I fly out of was my only choice. They're the only school in the area that gives sport lessons.

I'm looking at switching, but wife and I are talking about moving to a different part of St. Louis anyway so I'll have to see where we move to. Of course when I bought the house aviation wasn't on my mind, otherwise I wouldn't have bought in the one spot in the area where the closest airport is 30+ minutes away.
 
35-40minutes, depending on traffic. What's weird is there are three GA airports nearby that are essentially equidistant from my front door (19-22 miles).
 
Airport of my choice?
12 miles / 25 minutes
[would be 1/2 that if I could go direct instead of on roads]

Airport with available/suitable aircraft?
60 miles / 1:15 (good WX & Tfc)

each one way
 
About 20 minutes from the house to the hangars at KOLM. Distance isn't bad, but it's the city streets that slow me down.
 
I am about 5 miles from the hangar, about 10 minutes most days. Have several planes here that are 45 minutes from their owner.
 
20 to 30 mins ,both ,while up north or down south.
 
weirdjim said:
45 seconds by car, 5 minutes by walk, 3 minutes by ski.

I named the road I live on Downwind Court because my house is the exact turning point from the 45 to downwind for rwy 25.
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Click to expand...

I'll confess, you made me look (on Google Maps, that is). That road looks like a thoroughfare. Was it not always that way or did you name it to be contrarian?

P.S. How many more posts do I need until I'm out of the POA probationary period?
 
I live 3 miles from the airport as the Cessna flies, but it works out to more like 15 minutes door to hangar because I have to traverse around the south (drive around RWY 28) or north (drive around the 17s) end of Centennial (KAPA) airport to get to where my hangar is. Not too bad. If I lived the same distance east of the airport the drive would be 5 minutes or so. :dunno:

Keeping the plane at Front Range airport would likely be much cheaper but I'd curse every time I went out there, which would be seldom. It's just far. That would be a 40 to 45 minute drive. So I'd be out 1.2 to 1.5 hours just to go look at the airplane. :no:

My previous hangar in Hearne, TX (KLHB now) was about 20 miles and about a 20-minute drive from my place in Bryan. That was nearly all highway driving, obviously.
 
We had an airport about 2 miles from us so it took me maybe 10 minutes to bike there.
Then a lot of Californians moved to our city and complained about the noise so the airport was shut down and they are building shopping centers there for said immigrants.

The next closest airport is 7 miles away. Used to take 10 minutes to get there. City decided to add MANY traffic lights to "help" with traffic flow. Now it takes 30 minutes. Don't you just love pot-smoking hippies making decisions for everybody else because they think they know better?

Another next closest airport is maybe 40 minutes away but that involves driving 95% of the trip on the most congested Interstate highway in the whole nation. So I avoid that when I can.

The point of airplanes is faster travel (for us) and if it takes me longer to get to the airport than to fly the rest of the trip, it is starting to become a moot point.
 
My attitude is simple -- if you have to drive to get there, it is too far away. I bought my house where I did so I could base at Washington National (DCA). Eight years later, post-9/11, that airport stopped serving GA, and I have been forced to drive 13 miles/25 minutes ever since. I've been doing this for 13 years, so I suppose it must be acceptible.
 
From Alexandria, VA to Stafford (RMN), about 40 miles. I-95 on any afternoon? Sometimes over 2 hours. Just last week it took me close to 3 hours to get to the plane for a 1 hour flight to North Carolina. Almost need a helicopter to get to the plane! But then you got this whole FRZ thing...
 
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