<story><title>Fly Like You&apos;re Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)</title><url>http://www.fastcompany.com/1753756/social-flights-puts-private-flying-within-reach-of-the-everyday-traveler?partner=homepage_newsletter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>I&apos;ve got a better idea in the same space.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve always wanted somebody to take the idea of &quot;leave when full&quot; minibuses in the 3rd world and apply it to popular airline routes.&lt;p&gt;How cool would it be if there was an operator running flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco using small commuter jets with no fixed schedule and plenty of planes.  You&apos;d just turn up, buy a ticket, make your way to the gate, and get on the plane.  When it filled up it would taxi away and another one would fill its place.&lt;p&gt;Average wait time: less than 15 minutes.  No more showing up at the airport 2 hours early.&lt;p&gt;Naturally, you&apos;d have to charge a premium, but if you pick your routes correctly and target people with more money than time, you would clean up.&lt;p&gt;The only downside is that you couldn&apos;t do it from actual commercial airports like LAX and SFO because you&apos;d never get a slot to take off.  You&apos;d need to use smaller airports such as Boeing Field in Seattle.  It still seems pretty doable though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdl</author><text>There were &quot;air shuttle&quot; or &quot;air bus&quot; services, using small jets, on super high volume routes: SIN-KUL, DCA-JFK, Great Britain to Ireland.  You&apos;d buy a ticket, which was a right to fly on any flight, and then walk up to board and get on the next flight; they were frequent enough (every 30 minutes?) that it wasn&apos;t really an issue.&lt;p&gt;This only really works on very high volume routes, and the problem is your aircraft basically need to be dedicated to that route; a lot of the short flights otherwise (SFO-LAX for instance) are continuations of longer flights, which allow a carrier to for instance do a BKK-NRT-SFO-LAX flight and offer nonstop BKK-NRT (if they have 5th freedom), NRT-SFO, SFO-LAX, and direct BKK-LAX, BKK-SFO, BKK-LAX, NRT-LAX, using one aircraft (and probably 2 crews).&lt;p&gt;I think security screening is what killed the &quot;air bus&quot; market.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fly Like You&apos;re Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)</title><url>http://www.fastcompany.com/1753756/social-flights-puts-private-flying-within-reach-of-the-everyday-traveler?partner=homepage_newsletter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonkester</author><text>I&apos;ve got a better idea in the same space.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve always wanted somebody to take the idea of &quot;leave when full&quot; minibuses in the 3rd world and apply it to popular airline routes.&lt;p&gt;How cool would it be if there was an operator running flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco using small commuter jets with no fixed schedule and plenty of planes.  You&apos;d just turn up, buy a ticket, make your way to the gate, and get on the plane.  When it filled up it would taxi away and another one would fill its place.&lt;p&gt;Average wait time: less than 15 minutes.  No more showing up at the airport 2 hours early.&lt;p&gt;Naturally, you&apos;d have to charge a premium, but if you pick your routes correctly and target people with more money than time, you would clean up.&lt;p&gt;The only downside is that you couldn&apos;t do it from actual commercial airports like LAX and SFO because you&apos;d never get a slot to take off.  You&apos;d need to use smaller airports such as Boeing Field in Seattle.  It still seems pretty doable though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hammock</author><text>Most of the weekday traffic is business travelers, who have meetings scheduled and need to be guaranteed on the ground at a certain time. That would certainly work for a lot of leisure travel though.&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason why it&apos;s considered a sign of a civilized country if their trains run on time.</text></comment>