- 85.2% of long-distance trips (50+ miles) are taken by personal vehicle, only 12.1% are by air.
- The average long-distance trip covers 334 miles, but the typical (median) trip is only about 125 miles. Most "long-distance" trips are short hops just past the survey's 50-mile threshold.
- Americans actually switch from mostly driving to mostly flying between 750 and 999 miles, considerably farther than the roughly 600-mile break-even point a pure cost comparison would suggest.
- Visiting family or friends (38.0%) and personal vacation (36.7%) together account for nearly three-quarters of long-distance trips; business trips are just 7.8%.
01 Introduction
85.2% of long-distance trips (50+ miles) are taken by personal vehicle, only 12.1% are by air. Most conversations about driving versus flying compare the two options on cost alone. But the 2022 National Household Travel Survey asked a large, nationally representative sample of Americans directly how they actually traveled on their most recent trip of 50 miles or more: what they used, how far they went, and why. That makes it possible to see not what travelers should do on paper, but what they actually do.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file (ldtv2pub.csv)02 How Far Do "Long-Distance" Trips Actually Go?
NHTS defines a "long-distance trip" as any trip of 50 miles or more, one way. Across all such trips, the weighted average distance is 334 miles, but that average is pulled upward by a smaller number of very long trips. The median trip is only about 125 miles, meaning a typical "long-distance" trip in this data is closer to a regional weekend drive than a cross-country journey.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file, variable GCDTOT (great circle distance), weighted by WTPERFIN.Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.
Use the Calculator03 Mode Share: What Do Americans Actually Use?
Across every long-distance trip in the survey, personal vehicles dominate by a wide margin.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file, variable MAINMODE, weighted by WTPERFIN.| Mode | Share of Trips |
|---|---|
| Personal vehicle | 85.2% |
| Airplane | 12.1% |
| Bus (public, school, charter, intercity) | 1.2% |
| Rail (subway, commuter rail, Amtrak) | 0.6% |
| Other (taxi, rideshare, bicycle, walk, ferry) | 0.9% |
Even at trip lengths that would seem to favor flying, driving remains the default for the overwhelming majority of long-distance travel in America.
04 The Real Crossover Point: Driving vs. Flying
Mode share changes dramatically with distance. Breaking trips into bands by distance shows exactly where Americans actually shift from driving to flying.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file, variables MAINMODE and GCDTOT, weighted by WTPERFIN.| Distance Band | Personal Vehicle | Airplane | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50–99 mi | 97.8% | 0.3% | 1.9% |
| 100–249 mi | 98.1% | 0.5% | 1.4% |
| 250–499 mi | 92.3% | 5.4% | 2.2% |
| 500–749 mi | 80.1% | 18.4% | 1.6% |
| 750–999 mi | 49.6% | 48.4% | 2.0% |
| 1,000–1,499 mi | 45.2% | 54.5% | 0.3% |
| 1,500–1,999 mi | 26.5% | 66.7% | 6.8% |
| 2,000–2,999 mi | 17.0% | 80.8% | 2.2% |
| 3,000+ mi | 1.7% | 98.3% | 0.0% |
Driving stays above 90% of trips all the way out to about 500 miles, and doesn't drop below a majority until the 750–999 mile band, where personal-vehicle and airplane shares are nearly tied (49.6% vs. 48.4%). Past 1,000 miles, flying is the majority choice, and by 3,000+ miles it accounts for essentially all trips.
05 Why Do Americans Take Long-Distance Trips?
Beyond distance and mode, the survey also asked travelers their main reason for the trip.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file, variable FARREAS, weighted by WTPERFIN.| Trip Purpose | Share of Trips |
|---|---|
| Visit family or friends | 38.0% |
| Personal vacation | 36.7% |
| Other | 17.5% |
| Business trip | 7.8% |
Personal reasons, such as seeing family and friends or taking a vacation, drive nearly three-quarters of all long-distance travel. Business travel, often assumed to be a major share of long trips, actually makes up less than 1 in 12.
06 Methodology and Caveats
All figures in this article are drawn directly from the 2022 National Household Travel Survey's public-use long-distance trip file, weighted using the survey's person weight (WTPERFIN) to produce nationally representative estimates.
FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file- One representative trip per respondent. This file records each respondent's most recent trip of 50+ miles, not every long-distance trip they took, so it reflects the mix of long-distance trips being taken, not each individual's full travel history.
- Respondents who had not taken a qualifying trip, or whose trip details were not ascertained, are excluded from both the numerator and denominator for each figure, rather than counted as a mode or purpose.
- Distance bands with small sample sizes (particularly 3,000+ miles, n=42) carry wider uncertainty than the better-sampled bands under 1,000 miles.
- This is a single-year snapshot from the 2022 survey. This site does not have earlier NHTS long-distance cycles on file, so no historical trend is claimed.
07 Data Sources
Every figure in this article comes from a U.S. government source. No proprietary, estimated, or third-party data was used.
- Federal Highway Administration / Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use long-distance trip file (ldtv2pub.csv). nhts.ornl.gov