Let’s break it down.
In 2002, I flew to 3 conventions.
2003, I flew to 4.
2004, I flew to 4 again.
In 2005, 4 again.
In 2006? I flew to 2 events.
2007? 0.
2008? 0.
2009, 2010, and 2011 each had 1 convention we flew to. 2012 was 0. 2013 was 1.
So what happened? Well besides life in general (I mean once you get married you now have to pay for 2 tickets instead of 1!), flying out of Memphis is ridiculous and nearly completely prohibitive.
So let’s say Chase and I wanted to go to Comic Con again. There are no non-stop flights. Everything is a layover in Dallas or Chicago. The cheapest ticket is $600 a person. So that right there is already $1200 just for our flight out, not to mention baggage fees.
Where-as, if we lived in Chicago, we take a non-stop flight for $380 a person. Still expensive, but not over $1000 for plane tickets.
When we went to Orlando last year for Disneyworld (2012), our tickets together were nearly $700. That was almost what we paid for our hotel down there.
And really, it’s always been like that. We’ve driven to Nashville or Little Rock for cheaper flights plenty of times – the added cost of gas and parking there still ends up being cheaper than flying out of Memphis. We did that for A-Kon 2 years running, and for Anime Expo the year we went there, and a few other times as well (Animazement, COSI, etc).
The reason I’m going on about all this is that after ages and ages of discussion and maybes, Southwest is finally going to be flying out of Memphis! While I’m not saying I’m going to start flying to conventions again anytime soon (I really, really hate flying. It’s not that I’m scared of it, it’s that I hate the process.), I’m so glad we can finally at least have the chance of getting decently priced tickets when we do need to go somewhere.