A Not-So-Quick Getaway Test by Plane and Car

There was a time when deciding whether to fly or drive to the Bay Area from Southern California was simple: If you had the money, the one-hour flight was easier than a six-to-eight-hour drive.

Not anymore. Driving to Los Angeles International Airport can be a hassle, parking is costly and you’d better get there at least two hours early to check bags and go through security.

Who hasn’t wondered if it’s worth the time and trouble to fly -- especially now that highway speed limits have been raised from 55 mph to 70 mph?

We decided to put the two travel methods to the test. Jennifer Oldham, who covers regional aviation for the Los Angeles Times, would fly on a commuter flight from LAX, and Sharon Bernstein, who writes about ground transportation, would drive up the I-5.

The challenge: Get to San Francisco by noon for lunch at the Westin St. Francis hotel.

Jennifer booked an 8 a.m. flight to Oakland on Southwest Airlines and decided she would take a Bay Area Rapid Transit train into San Francisco and walk to the hotel.

Los Angeles’ airport agency recommended that she arrive two-and-a-half hours before departure, but that meant an incredibly early start and Jennifer, who drives to LAX frequently for work, figured that arriving 90 minutes early would be enough.

They met at Sharon’s Studio City home at 5:40 a.m., synchronized watches and headed out.

Jennifer drove her 1993 Honda Civic west on the Ventura Freeway and south on the 405 Freeway. Leaving for the airport before sunrise has its pluses: It took 35 minutes to negotiate a drive that can take twice that long during rush hour.

After parking at Wally Park at 6:15 a.m., Jennifer boarded a shuttle for the airport.

But the blissfully traffic-free morning came to an abrupt end. As the shuttle neared Terminal 1, vehicles were stacked up three deep unloading travelers, who faced lines that snaked down the sidewalk halfway to Terminal 2. Even the skycap line was long.

Fellow passengers said they had waited about an hour and 10 minutes to check their bags -- followed by a 35-minute shuffle through the security checkpoint. Realizing she would miss her plane if she had to wait in both lines, Jennifer decided to give up on checking her luggage.

Sharon, meanwhile, was moving swiftly up the I-5. She passed Newhall at 6:02 a.m., while Jennifer was still on her way to LAX, and was soon climbing up the Grapevine along with some truckers and a few other cars. She listened to the radio and sipped coffee.

Sharon was thinking that she ought to drive to the Bay Area more often when the car started listing to the right. She’d forgotten about the winds that can whip up along the Grapevine. It was blowing so hard that she actually found it difficult to keep the car, a 2001 Honda Accord, in its lane.

Maybe driving wasn’t going to be so relaxing after all.

Jennifer, meanwhile, was standing in the security line at LAX. Harried airline employees pulled people out of line who were scheduled for a 7 a.m. flight.

After about a half-hour, Jennifer passed through the metal detectors. She dragged her suitcase to the gate, got her boarding pass and was all set by 6:50 a.m. -- about an hour before the plane was set to board.

She bought a caramel macchiato, browsed through several bookstores and settled down to read the paper, figuring that Sharon, dealing with the stresses of driving, couldn’t possibly be so relaxed. However, she also imagined Sharon was making direct, and probably fast, progress toward San Francisco, while she was waiting -- and waiting -- to board her flight.

The waiting continued even after most of the passengers boarded the plane at 7:45 a.m. The Boeing 737 would be “holding for a few minutes” because passengers were stuck in line.

“Take a deep breath and say whatever mantra helps you deal with the stress,” the captain counseled the capacity crowd. He apologized for the chaos, saying, “It wasn’t just security, but Southwest’s processes as well.”

A Southwest spokeswoman later blamed the long lines on “the beginning of the summer rush, the day after Father’s Day and a day of unusually high cruise ship traffic.

“We’ve actually never seen lines like this,” spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger told Jennifer in an e-mail.

The plane finally lifted off at 8:10 a.m. Jennifer’s seatmate on the flight, businessman Gideon Sasson, said he had sent his bag home with his driver.

But Sasson, an executive with the Active Trader Group at Charles Schwab & Co., said he would never consider driving to San Francisco instead of flying.

“It’s long. It’s tiring. And it’s risky because you could get stuck in traffic,” said Sasson, who has commuted by air between Los Angeles and San Francisco for three years.

Meanwhile, Sharon was getting a little frustrated. Zipping along at about 75 mph, she was making great progress, but the long distance between highway rest stops was making the drive a bit uncomfortable. She finally stopped at a commercial center on Panoche Road in Firebaugh at about 9 a.m.

The restrooms at the Westside 76 station were fine. But at $2.60 a gallon, the gasoline was expensive. Thankfully, the Accord only needed a partial fill-up.

As Sharon was turning back onto I-5, Jennifer’s flight touched down at Oakland at 9:12 a.m. Still plodding up the Central Valley, Sharon seemed a sure loser. But it would be nearly an hour and a half before Jennifer made it to the hotel.

Oakland’s narrow terminals were full of long lines of frustrated travelers waiting to board morning flights. As at LAX, there is no train station at the airport. Instead, travelers must take a shuttle to a BART station.

Jennifer made her way to the shuttle stop, where she waited 15 minutes for a bus. A little before 10 a.m., as Sharon neared the turnoff for the Bay Area at I-580, Jennifer arrived at the BART station near the Oakland-Alameda County Arena & Network Associates Coliseum and bought a ticket.

With no one to give advice on which train to take, Jennifer jumped on the next arrival -- only to find herself going the wrong way. She got off at the next station, consulted the map and got on a train headed toward San Francisco.

As Jennifer sank into her seat on the spartan BART train, Sharon turned her car toward San Francisco. She was sure Jennifer already had arrived -- maybe even checked into the hotel and gone for her customary morning run.

Thirty minutes later, as Sharon neared Livermore, Jennifer got off the BART train at Powell Street. She walked for about five minutes to Union Square, where she easily found the Westin St. Francis.

Her arrival time: 10:35 a.m., almost five hours after she left Sharon’s house in Studio City.

Sharon pulled into the hotel parking lot at 11:25 a.m., just 5 hours and 45 minutes after setting out.

So the plane beat the car, but only by 50 minutes.

Jennifer had spent $216 for her plane ticket, $29 for parking at LAX and about $4 for the BART ticket. Sharon had spent $25 for gas (a total of $50 for the round trip) and $39 to park the car overnight at the St. Francis.

They both made it for lunch at noon. But they were both dead tired.