Every WNBA team will start using charter flights to travel to games by Tuesday.
The league made the announcement Thursday, following through on plans to commit $50 million over the next two years to provide full-time charter flight service for its teams during the season.
“As the league previously announced, we would be phasing in the program at the start of the season and can share that beginning May 21, all teams will be flying charter to games,” the WNBA said.
The move addresses years of player-safety concerns and means players no longer will have to deal with long security lines. It comes at a time when the league’s popularity has grown to all-time highs, boosted by the arrival of Caitlin Clark and other well-known rookies such as Angel Reese and Cameron Brink.
Only two of the four teams that traveled for opening-night games Tuesday used charter planes. The Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx were on charters, while the New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury traveled commercially.
There was a little bit of a competitiveness issue heading into a Thursday night contest in which the Liberty visited the Fever.
Clark and the Fever were able to charter home to Indianapolis late Tuesday night after their game at Connecticut, while the Liberty had to fly commercial from Washington to Indiana on Wednesday. That won’t be a problem again after Tuesday.
Both teams are flying commercially to New York for the second game of a home-and-home set Saturday.
Clark helped the NCAA reach its best viewership in history for women’s basketball, with nearly 19 million fans watching the title game between Iowa and South Carolina.
