Why You Should All Love SeaPort Airlines

By Andrew Hard

 

As you might have guessed from the fact that I've now planned my entire life around visiting all 592 ballparks/stadiums/arenas known to mankind, I'm kind of an airline nut. I've got Kayak alerts set up for trips that are so hypothetical that my wife cringes at the thought. "You want to go to Boston WHEN??? What about furniture for our new home?" (The answer: September 21, when Vandy plays UMass at Gillette Stadium). Naturally, I'm on Wikipedia every week or so hoping to see a new direct destination from Nashville that I could set up yet another meaningless alert for. This time, it was San Francisco I was curious about (seriously, how does Nashville not have a direct flight there yet?), when Wikipedia gave me a curious gem from an unknown outlet known as SeaPort Airlines:

 

Nashville to Athens, Georgia. Direct. For 98 dollars roundtrip.

 

I knew that Athens had an airport. Despite being less than 100 miles from downtown Atlanta, the airport used to run direct flights into Hartsfield-Jackson so that Athenians (Athen-ites? Athen-egans?) could avoid the 38.5-hour security lines in Atlanta and actually skip straight ahead to the lovely task of running from Concourse A to Concourse D in 20 seconds flat because Delta thinks that people are capable of teleporting. You would never actually consider flying from Atlanta to Athens unless you were a) completely handicapped; b) made of so much money that you should probably have your own plane instead; or c) the owner of Georgia Skies Airlines. But it made sense as a connector flight (subsidized by the DOT) to get people from Athens through Atlanta in a semi-cheap, heart failure-reducing way. Georgia Skies abandoned the route in September, when the DOT replaced it with...

 

You got it: SeaPort. To Nashville.

 

Now Nashville doesn't make nearly as much sense as a connector flight to Athens, simply because it doesn't have nearly the reach as Atlanta does. But it makes a hell of a lot more sense as a direct flight in and of itself. Nashville to Athens by car is about 5 hours -- in the middle of the night. Add in an hour for travel on I-285 from Cobb County to Gwinnett, and you're talking 5.5, 6 hours at least. Throw in the fact that gas is around $50 a tank and it takes at least two tanks to get there and back, and you're looking at a flight that costs exactly as much as a drive, but of course takes only one hour. Holy. Crap.

 

So if you're living in Nashville right now, I would suggest taking full advantage of this opportunity while it's still around. The more you actually fly, the better chance it has of sticking around. It's not like Athens is a dump of a town -- it's definitely in the Top 3 for college towns in the SEC no matter what your favorite school is (my personal list would be 1. Oxford 2. Athens 3. Auburn, with Starkville coming in about 50th place -- and no, Nashville is not a "college town" so it's not eligible). Georgia comes to Vandy this year on October 19, so I fully expect UGA fans to take advantage of this service -- but if you're in Nashville, take a weekend to go experience this amazing town. You'll be going back again before you know it.

 

For 98 dollars.

(SeaPort's website, by the way, is www.seaportair.com. Now if they could only add Oxford, MS, we'd be all set...)

 

 Next One Up

 

The Road to 592 is headed to Western Kentucky on Thursday to see the Hilltoppers take on South Alabama, followed by a DC trip this weekend that should catch the #7 Hoyas taking on Rutgers (pub crawl effects pending). After that, the OVC Tournament begins March 6 in Nashville, and I'll be courtside live tweeting all the excitement you could possibly garner from a SEMO-SIUE matchup.
 

 --The Road to 592 is a pipe dream started by a diehard Atlanta fan with a sparse history of truly great sports atmospheres (being Atlanta and all). Read up on my unending pursuit here and check out the full list of venues here. For those sick of conference realignment, you can also relish in another pipe dream of mine -- the 28-team SEC. Follow me on Twitter @andrewhard592.