Breanna Stewart joked about the limited impact of the WNBA's new charter flight plan, then called for 'a little bit more' from the league

• WNBA players have been pushing the league to provide charter flights for travel between games.
• The league expanded its private flight offerings for the 2023 season, but players still want more.

Breanna Stewart is pushing the WNBA for "a little bit more" on its most contentious issue: charter flights, or the lack thereof.

The league's 12 teams have long traveled from game to game on commercial flights, a reality that's resulted in nightmarish trips and endless hours crammed into coach for the world's best basketball players each season. But the WNBA's travel policies took on added scrutiny in the wake of Brittney Griner's return from Russian detention and Stewart's blockbuster free agency — in which she made private flights a major factor in her decision to join the New York Liberty.

Facing mounting pressure on the topic, the league announced a revamped travel program in April. The WNBA resolved to finance charter flights for any team playing games on consecutive days, all playoff contests, and the WNBA Commissioner's Cup championship game.

On its surface, the new policy appears to be a complete overhaul. But in reality, the league will only be chartering a handful of flights during the regular season; less than half the league's teams will fly private between the season's tip and the start of the postseason in mid-September.

"Well, I'll take the one charter," Stewart told Insider when asked about the "little bit of a change" to the policy during a press conference in New York, drawing chuckles from superstar teammates Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones seated on either side of her.

"Yeah, a little bit of a change," Ionescu added with a smirk.

Stewart and the Liberty will be the recipients of one charter flight — an August 17 trip from Las Vegas to Phoenix — in the entire five-month span of the regular season. Ideally, the two-time WNBA champion and 2018 MVP said, the league would work with the players and owners to make its charter flights program "a thing that continually grows."

"The whole thing behind it is, we want to get to a point in the WNBA where our first response to a question is not a no," Stewart said. "It's a yes, maybe. Or yes, and."

As recently as last summer, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the estimated $20 million-plus price tag of charter flights could "jeopardize the financial health of the league." The league has also publicly clashed with its most ambitious franchise owners — namely the Liberty's Joe Tsai, who was slapped with a $500,000 fine last year — over unauthorized use of charters during the season.

Engelbert has stressed the importance of "long-term growth" of the league to "fund things like this," as she said ahead of the 2023 WNBA Draft in April.

"This is something we've been working on since, I want to say since I've come to the league, but certainly hard in the last year," Engelbert said.

"The transformation of the league is happening, and it's working," she added. "I know a lot of people want instantaneous improvement and change. I want that, too, but as I know growing a business does take patience and time, and the transformation is happening."

But for Stewart and her colleagues playing night in and night out — not to mention throughout the year competing for teams overseas — the need for improved travel accommodations is imminent. The players and their allies in the fight for charter flights argue that private planes help ensure "our bodies are rested and recovered," which ultimately leads to a stronger in-game product.

"We want to be great on the court and sometimes these places we're going don't all have direct flights, or we don't all have great seats," Stewart said. "So it's a part of raising the needle, setting the standard."

"Hopefully we'll have a little bit more than what we have now for next year," she added.

Check out her full response below: