by Greg Moore
M&Eman wrote:The fact that the military booked air shuttles of such short distance is silly in the first place. There should be some sort of protocol about transportation under a certain distance never being air, always being rail or bus. A lot of people outside the Northeast (including perhaps people who set up the travel system) do not get how close everything is here. Living in Northern New Jersey, I would never fly for anything shorter than EWR-Chicago or EWR-Charlotte. Northeastern air shuttles strike my as inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and by all accounts are not exactly huge profit centers for the airlines, since they are expensive to operate. More airlines besides United should have codeshares with Amtrak. Anyone flying into Dulles (soon), DCA, BWI, PHL, EWR, JFK, PVD, or BOS has easy enough connections with Amtrak through a rapid transit link. EWR and BWI additionally have intercity trains stopping directly at the airport. It is a no-brainer for airlines to book LAX-PVD via EWR or something similar with Amtrak as the connection.To be fair, the Dulles' Metro connection is a LONG one (I believe over 30 minutes).
But overall, I agree.
I also suspect that in the long run, the airlines would rather give up the short-haul slots in the NYC area for long-distance flights.
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