unileeds

Puente Aereo, I take this every week and it is truly a fantastic experience in comparison to regular flying.

In the age where IAG is fascinated with Norwegian and cost cutting is in the DNA, is there an opportunity to transform travel albeit in some high frequency routes to the Puente Aereo journey??

I have not flown many other shuttles, but with points, it is cheap and very very convenient!

Thoughts?

ajeleonard

Puente Aereo works because it's a domestic high yield, high volume business route, which covers the additional costs. The DCA-LGA-BOS shuttles are similar

unileeds

I am aware of the reason it works, I just wonder what can be done to take elements of it and create a better experience... I mean, volume can be influenced by convenience (albeit a catch 22, one wont happen without the other), for example, with MAD/BCN London or LON-PAR or something like that... With Lon-Par it would give the Chunnel a good run for their money too...

All in all, I am wondering if just taking 20% of the features of this service could improve the customer journey by 80% and result in better loads, etc...

craigthemif

Shuttles don't really work when there is a fast city centre to city centre train option. Iberia have lost most of this business to AVE. The same applies to Alitalia for Rome to Milan Linate. It is much more convenient to take the train and get some work done than to take a taxi to/from airports and squeeze into a metal tube for an hour.

You might enjoy the cheap price when using Avios, but the cash fares are quite high. Business types might be willing to pay this, but essentially as part of a day trip for a meeting - therefore saving on accomodation, etc.

Besides anybody can indeed buy flexible or walk-up fares on every other route in the world, but you can only day-trip to a meeting if the flight is 60-90 minutes max. Are more people going to commute between Madrid and London because there are more flights (and cost more as a shuttle)? no...

Yllanes

Exactly. The point is that, as soon as the flight is, say 2 hours long, then there is little point in this flexibility (if you want to get something done in the day you will have to leave on the earliest flight). If the flight is shorter than that, then a good train connection becomes competitive (the plane only works in Madrid because you can get to the airport really quickly in a taxi from the main business area). In the end there are very few city pairs where this can conceivably work.

Ldnn1

It no longer works. It's loss-making.

http://www.elperiodico.com/es/notici...celona-5575590