Air shuttles are a thing of the past at least on the east coast. Why did the legacy Airlines like TWA , Eastern and Pan Am are no more as well United?
Security arrangements may be a big part of it. The Shuttle by Eastern Air Lines was a no-reservation, guaranteed seat, pay-on-the-plane operation. The financial collapse of Eastern and tighter security doomed such an operation.
While they are no longer uniquely branded, the former Eastern Shuttle still survives under American as the American Airlines Shuttle.
Delta operates the competing Delta Shuttle.
No.
An "expensive model collector"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_shuttle
Air Shuttles are short freiqent routes. Trains would be great for these if freight railroads would let us use there tracks without overcharging user fees
The Eastern shuttle was a marketing coup. Eastern served many cities such as Wilmington, NC, Massena, NY, Beaumont TX, ETC. The Feds allowed many of those cities to be dropped which gave Eastern a surplus of aircraft.
Eastern then assigned these aircraft to the shuttle as back up aircraft as the aircraft had very little value on the used market. EAL started with Martain 404s, Then DC-7s and later DC-6s and Constellations. Electras came on as jets come to EAL. The aircraft were kept until major overhaul time then sold. The recip engines were transferrred around as others failed. EAL cut way back their recip overhaul shop as a consequence.
EAL would schedule a prime section every hour EWR/ LGA - DCA; EWR/Lga - Bos. If the prime was full before scheduled departure a standby crew was called out to carry any more passengers who arrived before the departure time. Sometimes as many as 4 scections would be operated. Sometimes with ony one person or a D/H balancing trip.
Passengers just walked up to gate ( no security ) got on and paid for trip on board to flight attendants. Some off peak fares were lower than $13.00. Fuel. landing fees, ( very low ). and crew mostly the only costs.
Who did shuttle damage ? PRR , NYNH&H, later PC, & Conrail. Reliable service ( except weather ) much shorter enroute times, and cheap. There were many passengers who would travel to LGA and change planes to continue to BOS or DCA.
Note: Convair 440s very seldom used as they maintained service to places like Roanoke, Charleston, WV. Their engines were much more reliable until EAL shut down their recip shop.
What just about killed shuttles ? Security, TSA, slots, excessive landing fees, controller strikes,, loger boarding times. Down town to down town similar to Amtrak.
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