DCA vs IAD from Bethesda
 

Living in Bethesda, what do most do when faced with the nonstop from IAD vs. connect from DCA (or fly into an alternate airport) choice? I still fly DCA , but I keep toying with the idea of IAD. I am a short walk to the Metro but also have a car, so I can be flexible with Metro to DCA vs. Metro & Flyer to IAD vs. driving straight to IAD. Most of my travel is back home to Cincinnati, so I used to fly n/s on DL DCA-CVG, but as a Mileage Plus member, my options are --

1. US n/s DCA-DAY (or CMH if the fare is MUCH better, as it was around Xmas this year for whatever reason) -- the only downside to this is the hour drive home from DAY, which isn't horrible but I wouldn't want to do it every time.

2. UA DCA-ORD-CVG -- I'm scheduled to give this a shot in April, so we'll see how that goes/

3. UA n/s IAD-CVG -- never tried before (hence the question)

Note that I'm leaving out CO and US connecting options, since with the MP Visa, I figure that if I'm going through the hassle of connecting, I might as well get the bonus miles from booking directly with UA. There are rumors on Airliners.net that if the US-DL slot swap goes through, US might start n/s DCA-CVG, so that would be the best overall option, but that's not a sure thing and is a ways off in any event.

We obviously don't need to rehash the numerous positives about DCA (and I'm a major fan myself), but I'm interested to hear real-world feedback. From what I gather, the trip out to IAD combined with security time and getting to the gate tends to eat up much of the time savings from a n/s flight, so connecting from DCA ends up not being much longer in total door-to-door time (depending on connection time of course).

For our purposes, let's assume equal fares between the two options, which IME is pretty much always the case with UA between DCA-ORD-CVG and IAD-CVG n/s.

From Bethesda, DCA. No comparison.

DCA-DAY is 4x daily on US Express and its in the north pier.

Yep, decent flight times too. I'm also a Gordon Biersch Stein Club member so I never mind having to kill time with a few brews at GB before my flight either :p. The only downside I've found to flying US/USX out of DCA is the cattle herding that goes on at 35A. I will definitely be interested to see how I feel about flying UA on the DCA-ORD-CVG-ORD-DCA trip, since I've almost always hit n/s flights in the past to avoid connecting.

IMO, this depends critically on whether or not you drive to IAD during rush hour traffic. I would take a n/s from IAD over a connecting flight from DCA if I could schedule the IAD flight such that there's low risk of getting trapped in traffic. That said, I did get trapped in Beltway traffic on a Saturday afternoon once, which, coupled with long lines at IAD, forced me to miss my UA flight and fly standby on the next flight. Admittedly, I erred in leaving little breathing room.

That is exactly my fear about driving to IAD! By the time you allow adequate time for any contingency, you've eaten up the time savings from going n/s vs. connecting. My main concern is simply whether I am missing some benefit to flying n/s out of IAD by connecting from DCA.

I lived in Friendship Heights for some time. The problem with IAD by public transit is that getting there from upper Northwest or the 355 corridor requires backtracking and a double transfer; Metro discontinued its Bethesda-West Falls Church express buses some time ago. This adds time and uncertainty at off-peak hours.

Observations of traffic from my current commute seems to indicate more people take the Beltway from Maryland to Virginia than vice versa for the morning commute, the reverse in the evening. Off-peak, I would say the risk of encountering 495 traffic is roughly the same as encountering Metro delays (heck, there are Metro delays at peak hours too— I got stuck at Gallery Pl-Chinatown for 25 minutes once waiting for the Yellow Line around 6:30pm on a Friday).

Also depends whether you're flying solo, and how you plan to get around Ohio. To meet family in Cincinatti, we've flown DCA-DAY or DCA-CMH, and as you've noted, you can find some surprisingly cheap fares into CMH! If you needed to rent a car in CVG, you might as well pocket the airfare savings and rent one in DAY or CMH and drive the hour into Cincy. And that hour on I-71 or I-75 sure beats traffic in DC, or driving all the way into the Queen City!

I'll be flying solo and visiting the parents, so they will do the shuttling to and from the airport. The only wrinkle that presents is that I don't want to have them doing the 4 hour round trip to CMH all the time unless I'm really getting a steal. The hour drive (just about an hour even actually) to DAY isn't too bad, but is still significantly longer than the 35 min. trip to CVG. So I try to balance cost, my ease of travel, and their ease of picking me up.