WNBA making significant changes to charter flights program

The news comes hours ahead of the start of the 2023 WNBA Draft and less than six weeks before the regular season tips off on May 19.

“One of my main goals has been to enhance the player-first experience,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert said, per ESPN.com’s M.A. Voepel. “While recognizing in a growing league our size and scale, doing things incrementally and chipping away at it is the best practice.”

According to Voepel’s report, the league had traveled via commercial airlines “almost exclusively until 2019,” when Engelbert took over as commissioner. Four years ago, she approved the use of charter flights during the postseason in “circumstances where teams had to cross multiple time zones with just a day between games.”

Still, there has been a continued push for equality in the WNBA, specifically when it comes to travel.

In March 2022, the New York Liberty were fined $500,000 for taking chartered flights during the 2021 campaign against CBA rules.

The Association expanded charters to the entirety of the WNBA Finals in 2022, as well as for the visiting team for the final of the midseason Commissioner’s Cup.

“The topic of charter flights has been raised frequently by players, although they signed off on the 2020 collective bargaining agreement without charters,” Voepel wrote. “The WNBA has held firm that to maintain competitive balance in the 12-team league, no team can independently opt to charter flights. The league also said no franchise has come forward to present the board of governors with sponsorship offers to pay for charter flights for every team, despite some reports the Liberty had done that.”

The Los Angeles Sparks made headlines last August when members of the team were forced to sleep at the airport following a win against the Washington Mystics.

Per Voepel’s report, charter flights can be used for the trip between the two games of a back-to-back during the 2023 regular season and there will be five of those this year.

The commissioner said that while Monday’s announcement is just for the 2023 campaign, the issue could be looked at again in 2024, as the WNBA will have its schedule altered by a monthlong break due to the Paris Olympics.