Right, that's the ballpark of the 'natural ceiling' for how much they should be willing to pay (at maximum) for a solution involving deferring passengers; also in /real money/.

Rental car companies don't like you going over state lines? What? That's ridiculously untrue. I've never ever ever heard of anything like that and I never didn't take a rental car over state lines. I always read the fine print and I've used several companies.

I'm sure it would cost several thousand dollars. Do you think it wouldn't be worth the cost?

It may not have been practical for the flight crew because of hour on duty restrictions. But they could have transported 4 passengers for $1-2 k on a limo.

With Uber or a private cab company probably around $1,500. That's $375 per crew member, less than offered for IDB (if it had been offered in cash).

Care to elaborate? I've never had any trouble going over country lines, let alone state lines, in a rental car.

I've occasionally had rental companies limit me to nearby states, but they usually don't care. When they do care, I'm certain they can be made to stop caring if you apply enough money to it.

Rental cars (booked in Germany or Switzerland) often included restrictions for me. Most of the time they excluded a number of eastern/balkan states, quoting (if they offered reasons at all) insurance prices would be higher. The more expensive the car, the more likely were these limitations: Booking a Golf was 'go anywhere', booking a BMW 5-something .. not so much.

Completely irrelevant. We aren't talking about Germany or driving to other countries, that's totally different. We are talking about travel within one's own country. I would expect rental car companies to limit travel to foreign countries.

Nice use of 'we' there. I implore you to read the post I specifically replied to once more. That post explicitly talks about crossing country lines.

We = this article and the commenters on this article. We are commenting on travel between two US states, nothing to do with crossing country lines. The grandparent topic was, specifically, about ground transportion for four Americans from one part of the US to another part of the US.

Well, this whole subthread is about an American airline operating in the US. (And yes, you can potentially drive a car across an international border from the US!)

Five hour limo rides are nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a thousand dollars or two.