Can You Get There from Here?

 Wouldn’t anyone in Rhode Island or Southeastern Massachusetts prefer to fly from T.F. Green Airport rather than Logan, given a reasonable choice? This was the question I asked myself as I read Mark Patinkin’s Sept. 24 column in the Providence Journal about a new ad promoting the RI airport. It seems that there’s a new video ad promoting the virtues of Green over Logan. Mark calls the video “edgy” but I’d use the British slang “cheeky” myself.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure who exactly this ad is aimed at. Doesn’t everyone hate going to Logan, even people in Boston? The traffic getting there is extremely stressful and the parking can be difficult and expensive. This isn’t a secret. I assume the ad is aimed not just at people in this area but to those living in the western and southern suburbs of Boston who might not have considered Green before.

What the ad leaves out are these crucial questions: Is Green offering any direct, non-stop flights to your destination and/or do you want an international flight? Sometimes a big international airport like Logan is really the only choice. There have also been times over the years where flights out of Providence to the Midwest, for example, cost considerably more than flights out of Logan.

I was also amused by another article in the Journal this summer announcing that the most popular destinations from Rhode Island, in addition to Florida, were Baltimore and DC.  I assume this means that a large number of passengers are traveling on Southwest Airlines (a major carrier at Green) and they need to switch planes at those hub airports to get to their destination.

Last year we flew on the new budget airline Breeze, which offers direct flights to many of the more medium-sized cities that had not been served by flights from Green previously. We took a direct flight to Columbus and it was great getting there so quickly. Now I’m checking their schedules and it seems that a lot of flights were part of a summer schedule. They are at present only offering a dozen or so destinations from Providence, and Ohio airports aren’t included. Nor are flights to Los Angeles, which were offered this summer. I would think there would still be a big demand for direct West Coast flights from Providence.

So, I’d say Breeze is worth checking out, but it’s kind of a long shot whether you will find a flight you want, when you want, especially if it’s not summer. Few of these flights are offered on a daily basis.  It’s a budget airline so there are additional charges for this, that, and the other thing, but they do seem to have a lot of sales.

I haven’t done a survey on people’s travel experiences but I’ve been on two round trips from Green this year (both on Southwest) and both went well, I’m happy to say. Nice to get lucky, for a change. Neither trip was anywhere near any holidays. I won’t do that anymore. It did seem that the airports are much more crowded, and going through security at Green has gotten to be more of a hassle than it was. They keep promising new restaurant options at Green too but the choices were slim as of June. I hope it’s better by now. If it’s not, be sure to bring snacks with you.

My daughter tells me that going through security at the Sea-Tac airport when returning home from a recent trip to Seattle was really a long, drawn-out process so it was good to get there quite early. This is true of all airports these days. Again, she quickly found out that there are no good ways to fly from RI to Seattle but there are convenient direct flights daily on Alaska Airlines at Logan.

 So, however much you hate the ordeal of getting there, sometimes Logan is the only reasonable choice, even if the five hours spent flying all the way back from the Pacific to the Atlantic is followed by another hour in the car just to get from the airport to the suburbs. Whenever I think of flying coast to coast in a few hours, I always think of Lewis and Clark and then of the pioneers on the Oregon Trail in their covered wagons. This really puts airline inconveniences in perspective.