WNBA announces full-time charter flights during 2024 season
By Jacob Lev, CNN
(CNN) — The Women’s National Basketball Association will provide a full-time charter flight program for all its teams, starting this upcoming season, the league said on Thursday.
“We are thrilled to announce the launch of a full charter program as soon as practical for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, a testament to the continued growth of the WNBA,” league commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a release. “We have been hard at work to transform the business and build a sustainable economic model to support charter flights for the long term.
“While we still have a lot of work to do to continue to execute our strategic plan, we feel confident that the time is now to institute a full charter program to demonstrate our commitment to leading with a player-first agenda.”
The move is the latest in an evolution of the league’s travel policy. For a long time, WNBA teams generally didn’t travel by charter, except for select situations and games, and flew commercial flights instead. In part because of concerns about flight delays and security, some players publicly pushed for more charter flights. The league expanded its charter program in 2022 to include the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup championship game and all WNBA Finals games, and in 2023 it had charter flights for all postseason games and select instances where teams had back-to-back games.
The full-time charter program will be primarily operated by Delta Air Lines, according to the league.
“It’s exciting to add the WNBA to our prestigious roster of sports charter partners as we participate in this historic advancement in women’s professional sports,” Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, said. “We’re looking forward to providing the WNBA with the welcoming, caring and elevated service that Delta people have made famous.”
Seattle Storm forward Nneka Ogwumike, who also is president of the union for WNBA players, is “thrilled” that the league is providing the charter-flight program, she said.
“On behalf of the players, I express my appreciation and support for a bold move by the commissioner and team governors that in turn shows that they understand and value the health and safety of the players. It is time to be transformational. It’s time to bet on women,” Ogwumike said.
Last month, Engelbert mentioned the possibility of an expanded charter flight program, in part because players face more back-to-back games and the Olympics this year. She also added that the league “funded out” a $4 million fund for charters.
“Again, as we build the momentum and build the economic model to fund that longer term, there’s nobody that wants that more than I do for these players, but we have to be in the right financial position,” Engelbert said last month.
“We’re not going to jeopardize the financial viability of this league. It was just a few years ago we were surviving, and now we’re going from survive to thrive. So we’ll do it at the appropriate time, and we’ve been chipping away at it every year and adding additional charter flights for the players.”
The 2024 WNBA regular season begins Tuesday.
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