Phoenix guard Sophie Cunningham says Mercury's charter plane is 'too small,' creating competitive disadvantage
“You want to talk about a competitive advantage, while that’s one right there that our team has to be split up and our bags don’t even get to travel with us," Cunningham said.
The WNBA’s full league-wide charter program begins Tuesday but it’s already arrived with plenty of problems, obstacles and competitive disadvantages.
WNBA Player Representative and Phoenix Mercury guard Sophie Cunnigham said that her team arrived in Las Vegas ahead of its Tuesday game against the Aces using a normal flight and not a charter, "which is not good."
The Mercury also did not fly charter last week for their season opener against the Aces.
“We still flew a normal flight on the way up here,” Cunningham said Tuesday. “I think on the way home we finally get our charter.”
On May 7, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert told sports editors that the league would begin the transition to charter flights "as soon as we can get planes in places."
According to Engelbert, the charter flight program will cost the WNBA about $25 million annually for the next two seasons.
Before Engelbert announced the recent changes, teams were only allowed to utilize charter flights strictly for regular-season games on back-to-back days where flying was necessary and for postseason games.
Last Thursday, the league said that by May 21 all teams would begin flying charter to games.
“With that, we’re grateful, do not get me wrong,” Cunningham said. “We are so grateful that we’re able to start chartering but with that there’s a lot of things that need to be adjusted. Our bags and some of our people can’t fly with us because our charter is too small while other teams get big planes. You want to talk about a competitive advantage while that’s one right there that our team has to be split up and our bags don’t even get to travel with us.”
Competitive advantages have been a talking point since the New York Liberty were fined $500,000 in 2022 for chartering flights to away games without permission from the league out of fear it would give New York an unfair advantage against other WNBA teams.
Competitive advantages again came up when Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever flew privately ahead of their season-opening matchup with the Connecticut Sun last week, while the Mercury had to travel to Las Vegas on a commercial airline ahead of their season-opening matchup against the Aces last Tuesday.
The Minnesota Lynx also flew privately before their season opener in Seattle against the Storm last week.
Last week, Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi said the Mercury were not provided an explanation as to why the team had to fly commercially before the season-opening game in Las Vegas.
“Probably the lack of communication with the league has probably been always the biggest problem with our league,” Taurasi told Desert Wave Media last week before the season-opening game.
Engelbert and the league have received widespread praise for the implementation of the charter flight program but everything is not what it seems according to Cunningham.
“Social media makes everything sound so great and so butterflies and rainbows now that we got the charters but half the teams don’t even have a proper charter to fly with your whole team,” Cunningham said.
“So we are grateful but there’s still work to be done and I do think that we do get to charter home tonight, which is good, but again not everyone gets to come with us, so still needs room for improvement.”
The Mercury have a rematch against the Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Michelob ULTRA Arena. The game can be watched on Arizona’s Family 3TV and Arizona’s Family Sports or streamed on Mercury Live.
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