North by Northeast

I made an early morning run to Manchester, NH this morning, to drop the better half off at the airport. She had found a very affordable fare to visit a friend this weekend.

Recently, Manchester decided to rename the airport from merely “Manchester Airport” to “Manchester-Boston Regional Airport” to attract more customers. Some people don’t realize many people who work in Boston, live in southern New Hampshire. It’s about an hour or less commute. So if you’re looking for a good fare to Boston, then flying to Manchester could get you a better rate. Same deal with Providence to the south, though I know of few people who live in Rhode Island and commute to Boston.

But if you’re in Boston (and for my purposes here, let’s say within the 128 loop), my advice is that unless you’re saving a bundle, or unless you can get a direct flight to an out-of-the-way airport that you can’t get direct from Logan, don’t bother with Manchester. It’s quite a hike.

For us in Medford, I can get to Logan in like 15 minutes door-to-drop-off. So long as I don’t go at rush hour. But still, in rush hour, I would still get to Logan faster. So that fare had better be pretty cheap. Amanda had a Southwest flight that was $150 roundtrip. Unfortunately, she didn’t check Logan after finding this flight, so she may have saved some cash, but I will have driven four hours this weekend. So think how much four hours is worth to you before using Manchester.