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Landline Flight, anyone?

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AUTHOR: Linda Grady on 10/10/2024

Seeking to conserve my driving time, energy and long term parking rates, I decided to drive to my regional PA airport, Scranton/Wilkes Barre, an easy one-hour highway drive, rather than 2 1/2 tense, traffic – ridden hours to LaGuardia or Newark for a direct flight to St. Louis. It’s a tiny, empty airport with honor system self checkout at the souvenir and snack shop. As I’m sitting at the gate, I hear an announcement that our “landline flight” to Philly (where I’ll be transferring for the St. Louis flight) will be boarding in 30 minutes. We will be issued claim tickets to “claim our carryons” that will be stowed in the luggage compartment. The word “bus” has not been said – only inferred. Finally, the 2 1/2 hour “flight” time made sense, but it truly seemed to be a surprise to everyone sitting near me at the gate. There’s a bathroom on board, but no flight attendant, no safety equipment demonstration, no beverage service 🙁;  we weren’t even instructed to fasten our seatbelts!  But permission to depart was requested- I guess because we left 15 minutes before the scheduled departure. Seems like this is probably a much more energy efficient method of travel for such a short distance. And I think the $11/day parking is cheaper by a couple bucks than the NYC or Philly lots would have been. What say you? Has anyone else yet experienced a “landline flight”?  Is it the new way to “fly” short distances? Will it save commercial airlines?

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DrLefty
4 months ago

I have never heard of this. Wow!

Chuck BV
4 months ago

Cute. I’ve never seen the airlines do that, but Amtrak in California very much uses buses to fill in the gaps in their rail service. I suspect that they were not honest enough to say “we’ll use bus service to take you to our hub” is partially because Greyhound tanked the reputation of buses in the US decades ago (although the major US carriers are approaching doing the same for air travel in the US).

Nick Politakis
4 months ago

very interesting. I had never heard of something like this. How do the costs compare?

Eileen OHara
4 months ago

Hi Linda. I was heading to Scranton with a changeover in Philly. I too, only belatedly realized the hop to Scranton was via a bus. I kept thinking of other definitions of landline. 🙂 It was a very rainy Friday evening where lots of flights were canceled so perhaps the bus was the better choice. I will be eagle-eyed, though, to catch the name for future flights.

Rick Connor
4 months ago

Linda, I assume you were on American Airlines. They started a similar service from Atlantic city airport to Phila. Haven’t tried it yet. AC Airport is very convenient to S Jersey and parking is safe and cheap.

Marjorie Kondrack
4 months ago

Linda, hope your travel experience was seamless. “Landline flight”is supposed to be premium motorcoach travel, with many of the same amenities offered by airline flights.
Your first clue—they didn’t ask you to provide your own parachute.🤗

mytimetotravel
4 months ago

I’ve heard of it, but I still get some travel news. I much prefer trains to buses, but they’re in short supply in this country. Definitely in favor of avoiding Newark, although I hear they’ve renovated La Guardia.

mytimetotravel
4 months ago
Reply to  Linda Grady

The first time I decided to spend time in New York instead of just changing planes, I made the mistake of taking the shuttle in from JFK. My hotel was the last stop and it took forever – although I did get a tour on the way. After that I took the AirTrain and the subway.

parkslope
4 months ago

In the early 1990s, I traveled from Iowa to Salem, Oregon on United. Our connecting “flight” from Portland to Salem was a van. I remember our driver telling us that our maximum altitude would be about 100 feet.

Ben Rodriguez
4 months ago

I heard of it recently. Maybe hereon HD. Not sure. Never done it, but I have in the past taken MegaBus which I thought was decent transportation. Of course, I was in my 20s, so probably more hardy than I am now.

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