2 hours from a central hub I'd actually consider a plus. If you travel for work it's bad, but for any personal trip, skipping a connection is pretty valuable. Not just in time, but generally international / longer flights are higher priority, and are less likely to be randomly delayed or canceled.
I was on the far edge of relatively convenient airport access when I was working and traveling a lot (and, at some point, decided my employer was just going to pay for a private car whether they complained or not, which they didn't). Now I travel somewhat less but take fewer discrete trips so just pay my own transportation out of pocket.
Yeah I’m about 2 hours from the nearest real airport and it’s pretty miserable. Anything I can drive in 8 hours or less is faster to drive.
What you don’t appreciate is that it’s not just the added distance, it’s all the extra uncertainty. Losing an extra hour due to getting stuck on the highway behind an accident is a thing you have to account for.
So in the end you end up having to leave like 4 hours or more before your flight.
I live 400 miles in a straight line and I can drive to downtown Atlanta faster than I can fly to the Atlanta airport.
And, as I say, I get a private car and they do not want to cut things close (understandably). So my not uncommon 6am or 7am flights to either get to Europe without a redeye or to get to the West Coast with the afternoon free end up being 3am pickups.
