The sense or nonsense of regional aviation

[D-ECHO]

Here in germany, and I'm sure in many other countries as well, the national airline offers domestic flights.
Example: Airline: Lufthansa
Departure: Frankfurt am Main
Destination: Munich
Competitor: DB (train)
Start time: 12:00
Competition of time, money and enviromental footprint:
[b]Let's start with taking the train. [/b]From the city center you are usually in a few minutes at the main train station, so you can take the train from 12:20 to 16:11. -> At 16:11 you are at your destination
Price: 82€
see: https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query ... 1&OK#focus
CO2 (Environmental Footprint): https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query ... playMode=p
2,8g
[b]Now taking the airplane[/b]
You have to get to the airport: so take the train from 12:10 to 12:22 (13€). Usually you have to be at the airport 2 hours before departure, so the first plane fitting for you would be 14:15 to 15:15 (365,15€). Then you are at the airport of Munich. After 15 mins you have your baggage and 5 minutes later you have walked through the airport to the train station. It's 15:35 now. So, to get to the Munich city centre, you can take the train again: 15:36 to 16:20 (Price: ?) Overall price about 380€.
CO2 (Environmental Footprint): https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query ... playMode=p
114,3g

Soooo, let's compare:
Time advantage of airplane over train: -9 min (you're coming 9 minutes later)
Price advantage of airplane over train: -298€ (you're paying 298€ more)
CO2 advantage of airplane over train: -111g (you're producing around 110 g of CO2 more).

Why can such connections work??

[Catalanoic]

Yes, you're right, but in some other cases, only airplane travelling is usefull at higher distances or between islands and continents (nowadays), because there're no other better options.

[D-ECHO]

For sure, here I'm only talking about the nonsense of similar connections like the one I pointed out

[KL-666]

Regional flights are not in the first place designed as such. Airlines designed them to transport passengers to their hub, from where their long distance flights depart. Many airlines have deals where the hop to the hub is (almost) for free. Everyone from anywhere in the country can check in locally and only pays the long distance flight, the same as someone living near the hub. Equality for the masses, i would say this is

But of course the regional flights have empty seats, so secondly the airlines are happy to sell these seats to people who believe traveling by air regionally is faster.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Falcon]

In Alaska, regional is replaced with "Bush" flights because its a hell of a lot easier to fly around then to build tracks that only go one way.

[LesterBoffo]

Our area used to be served by a little railbus ( Deisel engine car and another passenger car) it's been over 50 years since that service was available. They're just now talking about renewing it again since our rail line was never taken out or converted to rails to trails.

[jwocky]

The problem with regional air traffic in countries like Germany is, if you have to fly connections. Then you check-in once at your nearest airport, you stay in the security zone on the connection airport and that's it. See, if you want to go for example from Stuttgart to Berlin, lets say Kudamm, it is faster to take the train. But if you want to catch a plane in Schoenefeld to fly off to America, you have effectively such a bad and slow connection from Berlin out to Schoenefeld that is is more comfortable to fly from Stuttgart to Schoenefeld. And of course, you save yourself two hours luggage hauling because you stay in the same traffic system.
In a perfect world, in this example, you could check-in your luggage in Stuttgart at the central railway station and then go by train to Berlin and just hop there on your next plane. But the luggage nowadays makes still all the difference. And since the German Bundesbahn traditionally breaks down the first two snow days, those are the days, you can't use trains at all.

[D-ECHO]

Just a short note, the German Bahn (DB) is no longer a Bundesbahn

[IAHM-COL]

Interesting. Can you elaborate about it DEcho? Is this something good or bad, in terms of economical and infrastructural progress?

[D-ECHO]

Puh, I think since I am thinking about it, it's a private company so I can't really say whether it was better or worse before, I just can say that there are some pretty disturbing problems nowadays...