You have to decide as you make these travel arrangements, how much money your time is worth. For instance, you can fly from Detroit to West Palm direct, but thru ny is cheaper. Of course it takes 3 hours longer and you risk losing your bag, having a mechanical breakdown, being late is twice is likely, etc., all for maybe 50 dollars per ticket. It's not worth it to me.
I know a guy who flew to Chicago midway with his family of four, and was going to get the bus to O'hare for his vacation charter to Hawaii. Well the flight to midway broke, he was late and everyone missed the charter. all for 200 bucks.He would have used half of that buying transportation in the city to O'hare anyway.
As far as a trip to Alaska. One good way would be to bus to minny, and take the flight from there. Avoiding the gouging that they do on the regional connections. Another suggestion is to fly on two flights and avoid using more than 25 seats. Airlines do not like to have too much of the seat inventory go to one customer. third, if you could as a league, arrange for tickets to Alaska, every week, you might get a pretty good deal on the price. I would certainly look into flying out of iron mountain at times too.
With the cost a transportation such a big factor now days, maybe the league should investigate doing the arrangements for some of these.
also, going to Huntsville. It's loads cheaper to fly into Nashville or Birmingham than to Huntsville. Unless you are going to charter, which I recommend anyway. It's two hours on the bus from BHM or Three from Nashville.