WNBA adding charters flights for playoffs, back-to-back games

The WNBA is adding charter flights for the entire playoffs and back-to-back regular season games this year, the league announced Monday.

The league will pay for all of the flights.

"It's significant dollars," WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The Associated Press. "Now that we have best of three and five in the semifinals and finals. ... You add it up it's a lot of flights."

Last year, the league chartered for the WNBA Finals as well as for the road team in the Commissioner's Cup championship game. Since taking over in 2019, Engelbert has slowly added a few more charter opportunities for teams. She allowed playoff teams that were traveling for more than one time zone to fly charter if they only had a day between games in the past.

"It's something I've been working on since I came into the league," she said. "It was never coming up with money for one year, but creating a sustainable model for the charter program to continue in perpetuity. Once you do it, you have to do it every year."

Engelbert said that there will be five charters needed during the regular season. Most of them are short trips between Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix. The longest one takes the Seattle Storm from Washington to Atlanta.

"As we continue to work on our growth as I've said we would chip away on this," she said.

Engelbert also said that the league has had discussions with the Mercury and Brittney Griner about her travel arrangements.

Griner is back in the WNBA after her nine-month legal fight in Russia, during which she was detained when customs officials said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage, then later arrested before being released in a high-level prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia.

Chartering