On Jul 16, 8:57*pm, "Jim Stockton" me@nowhere wrote:
" With fuel prices, that would be a significant difference. --
Jim in NC

Following that I would suggest Airtran to DFW. They can handle almost any
weather that you couldn't and a ticket is about the same as 25 gal of avgas.
Alot more practical and a lot less likely to make a smoking hole due to got
to get there pressure. If you want to fly a homebuilt do it, just don't try
to reliably commute in it.
My 2 cents worth.
Jim Stockton

Many people use both spam cans and homebuilts to commute. There is no
reason that a homebuilt would be any less reliable than any other
aircraft if properly constructed. Either way, it must be considered
that commuting with any private aircraft is highly dependent on
weather factors. Considering the miserable record of commercial
airlines over the last few years, I wouldn't consider private aircraft
commuting any less reliable than commercial.

I have commuted by commercial airlines many years ago with great
success but times have changed. First, my commute was between to
fairly close cities with major carrier service and hourly flights
between the destinations. I wouldn't consider trying it today. I had
to do the commute for about 18 months a couple of years ago and found
it much quicker to just drive the 260 miles. A longer commute as
discussed by the originator of this thread would not be possible to
drive but private aircraft would take about the same about of time
that I spent driving. That from a time standpoint would be less than
required for commercial even if you were guaranteed catching a flight
that met your schedule.

The biggest problem by far would be finding a commercial schedule that
would meet the requirements for timely commutes. Unless the origin
and destination are major cities with routine and frequent direct
schedules between them, commuting by commercial airlines would be more
time consuming that it was worth. I see no reason why a 700nm commute
by private aircraft including a mission capable homebuilt would not be
a highly reliable choice.