“When you factor in the time it takes to travel to and from the airport, it's almost a 24-hour trip.”
You often have to fly from Korea to the east coast of the U.S. for work. The flight is very long. You're complaining about how long it is to a colleague and you explain to him this.
When you factor in the time it takes to travel to and from the airport, it's almost a 24-hour trip.
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factor in (something)
Counting or adding numbers, time, money, etc. can be tricky in real-life situations. You have to make decisions about what things to include, or "factor in", and what things to leave out.
For example:
I thought I'd have plenty of time to get here, but I didn't really factor in the traffic.
When you were calculating the cost, did you also factor in taxes?
the time it takes to (do something)
English speakers use the word "take" to talk about time. A trip "takes" a certain amount of time, like 15 minutes or an hour.
It only took 10 minutes.
If you want to talk about how long something lasts, use the expression "the time it takes to ___". For example:
In the time it takes to complain about it, you could just as easily get up and fix it yourself.
travel to and from (somewhere)
The phrase "to and from" is common for talking about travel in two directions:
I listen to audio books in English on my way to and from work.
In the example above, the person goes to a different airport than she comes from. But "to and from" is still OK to use, because they're both airports.
a (number)-hour trip
Use this expression to talk about how long a trip was.
You can also measure a trip in terms of days or weeks:
We took a five-day trip to Bali.