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Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving

Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. It would be 2 hours of just airport shenanigans much less the flight itself.

deleted 1mo ago
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tomjessessky 1mo ago
There are a fair number of connecting flights that this is a good fit for. For example, I fly out of Madison, WI regularly and almost always connect through Chicago, which I believe is right around the 125 mile mark.
- zxexz 1mo ago
  Used to regularly take the shortish flight from Boston to Chicago, and then a bus >3x as long to Madison to see family, because the puddlejumper was too expensive or not even running.
Toutouxc 1mo ago
> 125 miles … That’s less than two hours of driving. I don’t know where you live or what you drive, but I just punched in a destination 200 km away as the crow flies, the Alps are in the way and I’m looking at five hours of driving. Also, water.
- Thlom 1mo ago
  Rookie numbers. As the crow flies it's 250km between me and my old town. Used to drive back and forth a lot back in the days and it takes everything from 8 hours to 10 hours depending on the route you take and whether you hit the ferries on schedule or not. Plus 30 minutes for resting and eating. Flying takes 50 minutes in a propeller airplane + travel to and from airports and airport shenanigans (not too bad at these small airports). If you take the morning flight you'll be in town by the time people start showing up for work. If you drive you'll be in town by the time people start leaving work.
- shuwix 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Toutouxc 1mo ago
    I am, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that 125 miles as the crow flies is “less than 2 hours of driving” between like 6 specific pairs of destinations in the whole world.
    - bluGill 1mo ago
      125 miles as the crow flies is less than three hours (two hours is a little tight) of driving for most trips of that distance people make! People tend to have friends and family they want to visit regularly. So they try plan their life around not moving too far from where they grew up. That means people won't even look at a move of 125 miles away if there is not good transportation back. In turn if the high speed route between the two destinations they won't move there and in turn won't be making those trips. Note that I said route above, not highways. Trains, boats, airplanes, cars, or anything else you can imagine works. The method of travel doesn't matter at all. What matters is how long it takes, and that you would use it for the trip. Half an hour door to door (by whatever travel means) means you can have dinner after work with those friends once in a while. 1 hour means you can visit every weekend, but you lose those dinner mid week dinners. 2-3 hours means you visit for every minor holiday, but it isn't every weekend. At 4-6 hours every visit is an overnight. At 8+ hours this is a week long trip. The above ranges are guidelines, not rules, they get fudged and overlapped all the time depending on various details. If the trip is 5 hours by train you might still do it as a day trip since you can plan to nap on the train. Even if you have to drive 6 hours each way: you might attend a funeral and return all in one day.
      - Toutouxc 1mo ago
        I live in Czechia, in Europe, a first-world country with dense population and a very normal road network. I am now on vacation, and I’m exactly 205 km as the crow flies from where my parents live. If I wanted to drive to them right now, it would be a 309 km trip estimated to take 3.5 hours or, avoiding highways, a 252 km trip, over 4 hours. I don’t care about the rest of your post, I just want you to understand that a completely straight highway through some corn fields isn’t how the rest of the planet drives.
zxexz 1mo ago
Depending on the cost, and availability, 125 miles gets you within easy public transit range of NYC from Boston. Now, of course, most of the hassle of getting to NYC from Boston is transit to and from the airport. And of course, transit from JFK, Laguardia, etc into the city. There are at least 5 capable airports/airstrips closer to me than Logan or T.F. Green. Only one of them, Worcester, offers NYC flights. Worcester is almost an hour from me on average, and a bit more expensive. It’s an hour from takeoff to landing (I’ve arrived 10 minutes before takeoff, at the PARKING LOT many times without it being an issue). If they can get this in and out of even smaller airports, like in Stow, MA, which is beyond capable, it will be a gamechanger.
- bluGill 1mo ago
  Too bad Amtrak can't run good service. This is a perfect area for high speed trains, but instead the service is too slow and not frequent enough.
neals 1mo ago
Without noise, over time, travel will change.
- lawrenceduk 1mo ago
  There will still be some noise. But yes, it’ll be less noisy.
keiferski 1mo ago
Could be useful for hub and spoke type systems, where you fly from a smaller city to the main hub, and catch a connection from there. Even then there are lots of flights in Europe that are between cities less than 1 hour apart. This idea generally makes more sense in Europe than the US, I think.
- rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
  Their first customers were from the Nordics, if you watched the video
- theodric 1mo ago
  Electric propulsion would eliminate the local environmental impact of emissions justification for the short-haul flight bans that are floated and/or implemented [1] from time to time in Europe. It makes sense to spray less jet/avgas exhaust when possible. Of course, if the ban reasons include noise abatement or evil conspiratorial machinations, they're still on the table ;) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban?#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban?#Overvie...
  - bluGill 1mo ago
    Perhaps, but almost all of those shorter trips are routes that should have fast train service anyway.
petesergeant 1mo ago
Mandalay to Bagan, Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido, Chiang Mai to Pai… shitty mountain and hill roads can make short plane distances take forever
CalRobert 1mo ago
SFO to sac and Monterey, lax to (SD, Santa Barbara, etc) could be good for those “I live in a 50k person town and need to get to a hub” flights. Of course those -should- be easy on trains too…
2III7 1mo ago
You don't drive to islands.
- theflyingelvis 1mo ago
  Bridges are a thing
  - Zxian 1mo ago
    Yeah, and they require a place to build. Do you think bridges between the Hawaiian islands is feasible? Report recently from my area. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/transportation-reports-and-reference/reports-studies/vancouver-island/fixed-link https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/transporta...
    - theflyingelvis 1mo ago
      There was no mention of Hawaiian Islands in the comment. To your question… Feasible: no; Possible: yes.
Kaliboy 1mo ago
I live in the Caribbean. For island-hopping airlines this would be a godsent. But I doubt we have the capital to buy them new.
- speed_spread 1mo ago
  Just in saved maintenance they'd probably pay for themselves within a few years.
cuu508 1mo ago
> 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. Assuming you have a straight road in that direction with a speed limit that allows an average speed of more than 100km/h.
PaulRobinson 1mo ago
Not much airport shenanigans in the small island hopping nations and the fjords this is aimed at. 125 miles in 2 hours is assuming flat, straight, high-speed, low-traffic roads. Sure, people might not use these to fly SFO → LAX or back, but they likely will use them to go ABZ → LSI, and the "check-in and security shenanigans" are, errr, quite relaxed, compared to what you might be used to at JFK... There's a ton of small routes that just aren't getting much service now because of operating costs - the founder speaks to that in the video - that this could serve. A slightly larger aircraft able to do ~300 miles on battery and then say 1,000 in hybrid mode, might resurrect the economically unviable but relatively fast LHR/LGW flights down to NQY. The six hour drive is pretty, but... yeah...
- dyauspitr 1mo ago
  300 miles is very viable for a lot of routes. Not 125 though.
mschuster91 1mo ago
> Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. There are a lot of "island hopper" and bushpilot mini airlines in the world. The current world record is a route in Scotland that, on good days, takes less than a minute of flight time [1]. It is much much easier to supply such islands with electricity (there almost always is a power grid tied to whatever the nearest mainland is) than to continuously haul fuel around. And in Croatia... that is easy enough distance to cover Rijeka-Zadar for example, which is about three hours worth of car or bus drive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight
engineer_22 1mo ago
If you're going through a small airport, or hopping on a plane at an FBO, there are not long lines and invasive screenings, you just identify and go

deleted 1mo ago

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tomjessessky 1mo ago

There are a fair number of connecting flights that this is a good fit for. For example, I fly out of Madison, WI regularly and almost always connect through Chicago, which I believe is right around the 125 mile mark.

zxexz 1mo ago
Used to regularly take the shortish flight from Boston to Chicago, and then a bus >3x as long to Madison to see family, because the puddlejumper was too expensive or not even running.

Toutouxc 1mo ago

> 125 miles … That’s less than two hours of driving. I don’t know where you live or what you drive, but I just punched in a destination 200 km away as the crow flies, the Alps are in the way and I’m looking at five hours of driving. Also, water.

Thlom 1mo ago
Rookie numbers. As the crow flies it's 250km between me and my old town. Used to drive back and forth a lot back in the days and it takes everything from 8 hours to 10 hours depending on the route you take and whether you hit the ferries on schedule or not. Plus 30 minutes for resting and eating. Flying takes 50 minutes in a propeller airplane + travel to and from airports and airport shenanigans (not too bad at these small airports). If you take the morning flight you'll be in town by the time people start showing up for work. If you drive you'll be in town by the time people start leaving work.
shuwix 1mo ago
[flagged]
- Toutouxc 1mo ago
  I am, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that 125 miles as the crow flies is “less than 2 hours of driving” between like 6 specific pairs of destinations in the whole world.
  - bluGill 1mo ago
    125 miles as the crow flies is less than three hours (two hours is a little tight) of driving for most trips of that distance people make! People tend to have friends and family they want to visit regularly. So they try plan their life around not moving too far from where they grew up. That means people won't even look at a move of 125 miles away if there is not good transportation back. In turn if the high speed route between the two destinations they won't move there and in turn won't be making those trips. Note that I said route above, not highways. Trains, boats, airplanes, cars, or anything else you can imagine works. The method of travel doesn't matter at all. What matters is how long it takes, and that you would use it for the trip. Half an hour door to door (by whatever travel means) means you can have dinner after work with those friends once in a while. 1 hour means you can visit every weekend, but you lose those dinner mid week dinners. 2-3 hours means you visit for every minor holiday, but it isn't every weekend. At 4-6 hours every visit is an overnight. At 8+ hours this is a week long trip. The above ranges are guidelines, not rules, they get fudged and overlapped all the time depending on various details. If the trip is 5 hours by train you might still do it as a day trip since you can plan to nap on the train. Even if you have to drive 6 hours each way: you might attend a funeral and return all in one day.
    - Toutouxc 1mo ago
      I live in Czechia, in Europe, a first-world country with dense population and a very normal road network. I am now on vacation, and I’m exactly 205 km as the crow flies from where my parents live. If I wanted to drive to them right now, it would be a 309 km trip estimated to take 3.5 hours or, avoiding highways, a 252 km trip, over 4 hours. I don’t care about the rest of your post, I just want you to understand that a completely straight highway through some corn fields isn’t how the rest of the planet drives.

zxexz 1mo ago

Depending on the cost, and availability, 125 miles gets you within easy public transit range of NYC from Boston. Now, of course, most of the hassle of getting to NYC from Boston is transit to and from the airport. And of course, transit from JFK, Laguardia, etc into the city. There are at least 5 capable airports/airstrips closer to me than Logan or T.F. Green. Only one of them, Worcester, offers NYC flights. Worcester is almost an hour from me on average, and a bit more expensive. It’s an hour from takeoff to landing (I’ve arrived 10 minutes before takeoff, at the PARKING LOT many times without it being an issue). If they can get this in and out of even smaller airports, like in Stow, MA, which is beyond capable, it will be a gamechanger.

bluGill 1mo ago
Too bad Amtrak can't run good service. This is a perfect area for high speed trains, but instead the service is too slow and not frequent enough.

neals 1mo ago

Without noise, over time, travel will change.

lawrenceduk 1mo ago
There will still be some noise. But yes, it’ll be less noisy.

keiferski 1mo ago

Could be useful for hub and spoke type systems, where you fly from a smaller city to the main hub, and catch a connection from there. Even then there are lots of flights in Europe that are between cities less than 1 hour apart. This idea generally makes more sense in Europe than the US, I think.

rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
Their first customers were from the Nordics, if you watched the video
theodric 1mo ago
Electric propulsion would eliminate the local environmental impact of emissions justification for the short-haul flight bans that are floated and/or implemented [1] from time to time in Europe. It makes sense to spray less jet/avgas exhaust when possible. Of course, if the ban reasons include noise abatement or evil conspiratorial machinations, they're still on the table ;) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban?#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-haul_flight_ban?#Overvie...
- bluGill 1mo ago
  Perhaps, but almost all of those shorter trips are routes that should have fast train service anyway.

petesergeant 1mo ago

Mandalay to Bagan, Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido, Chiang Mai to Pai… shitty mountain and hill roads can make short plane distances take forever

CalRobert 1mo ago

SFO to sac and Monterey, lax to (SD, Santa Barbara, etc) could be good for those “I live in a 50k person town and need to get to a hub” flights. Of course those -should- be easy on trains too…

2III7 1mo ago

You don't drive to islands.

theflyingelvis 1mo ago
Bridges are a thing
- Zxian 1mo ago
  Yeah, and they require a place to build. Do you think bridges between the Hawaiian islands is feasible? Report recently from my area. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/transportation-reports-and-reference/reports-studies/vancouver-island/fixed-link https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/transporta...
  - theflyingelvis 1mo ago
    There was no mention of Hawaiian Islands in the comment. To your question… Feasible: no; Possible: yes.

Kaliboy 1mo ago

I live in the Caribbean. For island-hopping airlines this would be a godsent. But I doubt we have the capital to buy them new.

speed_spread 1mo ago
Just in saved maintenance they'd probably pay for themselves within a few years.

cuu508 1mo ago

> 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. Assuming you have a straight road in that direction with a speed limit that allows an average speed of more than 100km/h.

PaulRobinson 1mo ago

Not much airport shenanigans in the small island hopping nations and the fjords this is aimed at. 125 miles in 2 hours is assuming flat, straight, high-speed, low-traffic roads. Sure, people might not use these to fly SFO → LAX or back, but they likely will use them to go ABZ → LSI, and the "check-in and security shenanigans" are, errr, quite relaxed, compared to what you might be used to at JFK... There's a ton of small routes that just aren't getting much service now because of operating costs - the founder speaks to that in the video - that this could serve. A slightly larger aircraft able to do ~300 miles on battery and then say 1,000 in hybrid mode, might resurrect the economically unviable but relatively fast LHR/LGW flights down to NQY. The six hour drive is pretty, but... yeah...

dyauspitr 1mo ago
300 miles is very viable for a lot of routes. Not 125 though.

mschuster91 1mo ago

> Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. There are a lot of "island hopper" and bushpilot mini airlines in the world. The current world record is a route in Scotland that, on good days, takes less than a minute of flight time [1]. It is much much easier to supply such islands with electricity (there almost always is a power grid tied to whatever the nearest mainland is) than to continuously haul fuel around. And in Croatia... that is easy enough distance to cover Rijeka-Zadar for example, which is about three hours worth of car or bus drive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_to_Papa_Westray_flight

engineer_22 1mo ago

If you're going through a small airport, or hopping on a plane at an FBO, there are not long lines and invasive screenings, you just identify and go