The entire reason it makes no sense to pay for a flight from NY to DC currently is the required 1-2 hour wait time TSA nightmare before you board your flight. You can DRIVE in 4 hours, so it makes no sense to spend up to half that time just waiting in the lounge.

DH had quarterly business trips planned a year in advance. Did the company bother with buying 25 airline seats (specifically on different airlines or different times so as not to wipe out the entire staff in the event of an emergency ) early enough to get a discount? Nope, 1-2 weeks in advance they were scrambling, for each and every trip!

Doesn’t seem like a big issue to me.

However, I believe some people are simply not comfortable traveling and the little blips put them over the edge.

1. The longest range 14 passenger plane currently flying could barely make over 1,000nm and travels, at best, around 2/3 the speed of other airliners. What that means is you will be making tons of stops on the way to your destination and it will take you well over 24 hours to make it cross country. Also, it will be extremely turbulent compared to other flights.

2. The costs to operate 14 passenger aircraft are extremely high on a per seat basis. Most flying to small communities is done on larger, more efficient aircraft (like the Beech 19 or Saab 340), is government subsidized (look up Essential Air Service), and have outrageous ticket prices like $300-$500 one way (for less than 200 miles) and is STILL wildly, wildly unprofitable.

How they can profit by flying someone all over the country for a month for $150 is beyond me. Besides, once the traveling public has a taste of the piston (read: propeller) “tin cans” they use to do this flying, there will be only a trickle of folks willing to sign up.

Please use caution GRS viewers, this is most definitely NOT the value it pretends to be, even if the cost is low.

The JetBlue offer, OTOH, seems to be pretty cool!

Imagine if you combined the standing room only idea with the PlaneRed availability? It really would be like catching a bus!

However, I imagine in PlaneRed’s case there are plenty of smallish, close(ish) airports in major Eastern cities. In fact, it sounds like a company could very affordably rent their own plane, in effect, if PlaneRed decided to market corporate subscriptions for those companies who want to more reliably transport employees along known routes/times. Lots of applications actually. It would also be great for students wanting to visit home if they live in Boston but go to school in New York. Definitely more information is needed. Like, are these month-to-month subscriptions or are you required to sign a 6mo or 1yr contract? Month-to-month would be Awesome for long distance relationships too.

I do wonder, are smaller planes more susceptible to weather delays? Ice on the wings is ice on the wings, but maybe smaller planes have more issues with gusty winds or something?

It is always exciting to read a thoughtful, provoking, or insightful comment and notice that the commenter has their own blog. I love to find new blogs with intelligent authors that I can add to my daily intake of media.

However, I also notice when you near-spam the comment sections of the other blogs I read, obviously hoping to increase your readership. No, you don’t spam hard enough to get yourself in official trouble. You just leave vapid or cheerleading comments that took little mental energy to produce, and you leave them every day. Blogs by such authors I actively avoid.

I’m not trying to pick on Brian, he is not the only one, just the most recent. I did like his blog when I clicked through to it, but I am increasingly irked by comments like these. Yes, I could just ignore them. I will do that going forward, but it only seemed fair to give cause.

A small aircraft/ small airport network like this is an old idea in aviation, but the idea that you can do it that cheaply is insane.

For personal travel, I only get 4 weeks vacation a year. I’m not sure I can fly enough to make that all you can fly deal really a deal for me? Aside from that, Canada is about 100 years away from such an arrangement.

I remember at the desk for initial check-in (this was before non-mainframe internet access) the agent asked if we’d like our boarding passes – yes, we said. The agent then printed out our passes for the entire trip (must have been 10 or more segments each)! We apologized to those behind us in line.

I haven’t used any of the passes myself (and don’t qualify for the student – too old). But my dad has used them before with good success.

The same airline is the only company so far that has sent our daughter credit card offers. It’s not like they don’t have her DOB on file.

I can see the business case: the airline gets its money up-front, and most people won’t use it as much as they think they will.

I’m not sure I’d be comfortable hoping for available plane seats when I need them, though.

I’d think it would be handy. My husband just bought a 15 leg trip from Delta for a visit to the states. We paid $1500 but it takes him from Warsaw to Alaska, Phoenix, Greenville, SC and Tampa and then back to Warsaw. But if he had unlimited (but this is over a 2 month period of time)…there could be real potential in this.

I would buy one of these for when I did my national park hopping. It would make my life much easier than dealing with multiple tickets.

Nice post.