- 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—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