Can Buses Replace Short Haul Flights?
Jennifer Billock October 04, 2019
After you buy a flight, what would you do if you found out the final leg of your trip—which could potentially be a short regional flight—is actually going to be a bus ride instead of on a plane? That’s the idea for a new startup looking to replace short regional flights with buses instead of planes.
The flight from Chicago to Milwaukee is only 17 minutes. Yet if you’re flying through to Milwaukee from an international or longer domestic flight, you often need to make that connection. But if a new startup has its way, that flight will soon be replaced by a bus ride.
Landline, a new business started by former Alaska Airlines network planners Ben Munson and David Sunde, is hoping to eliminate those super short regional flights by placing passengers on a bus instead to get to their next airport. They expect to have the service running for routes ranging from 50 to 250 miles.
The genesis of the idea came from the knowledge that short regional carriers have trouble attracting pilots and end up retiring their smallest jets—which cuts off service between smaller communities and bigger airline hubs.
“The genesis of the idea was, with consolidation and the pilot shortage and the lack of really any aircraft development in the sub-60-seat sector, there is not a proper way to source this mission if you are in an airline,” Sunde told Skift.
The company is intended to be thought of as a regional airline that just uses buses instead of planes.
“When you spend time in the regional airline business, you start to learn how challenging it is to make money with small aircraft,” Sunde told Skift. “The cost structure of the bus is really unbeatable. No one had ever approached it like running an airline before.”
[Featured Image: Landline]
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This is rather common in Europe, except for the use of trains in stead of buses...
A lot depends on the bus. If it is a NEW bus line, operated like an airline, operated from a proper terminal, maybe. If it is the existing bus lines, just "code-shared" with the new groundbound "airline", NO WAY. I did a few bus rides, between Austin TX and College Station TX, when I was a lot younger. NEVER AGAIN.
Upto 100 to 120 miles buses are a good alternative (max 2 hours). More than that better off on a plane.
Living in a small town has numerous advantages, EXCEPT when it comes to air travel. I would rather take a Landline bus when my comfy long-haul flight arrives Major City rather than having to find Gate X-256 to connect to my one-hour hop home on a puddle jumper with my knees in my face and my rollaboard stowed in the toilet.