Odd real world airline routes

[Andre]

I stumbled over an interesting article about odd airline routes.  Fun fact: Over the past decade, airlines have added 10,000 new routes—a 37% increase—serving more than 37,000 city pairs per month. Maybe some inspiration for future route demand in Airwaysim?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578050781305169460.html

[isuzu777]

There used to be MFE-MEX (McAllen, Texas to Mexico City) in Airwaysim, but no longer. It had a demand of about 30 per day and I used to fly it in the game! This reflected the real life flights that have existed off and on over the years. The route used to be flown by Continental on 737's and regional jets, maybe Aeroliteral before that, and starting March 15th will be resumed by AeroMar on CRJs. I grew up in the MFE area, and my family still lives there, and I can see the culturally-linked demand but it is definitely rare for a small/medium size US city to have international service.

[Troxartas86]

Some of these sound rather promising. I know I could have used that Houston-Lagos route when I had a major airline in Nigeria a while back. Just didn't seem worth it for the numbers the game provided. Unfortunately many of the routes mentioned in the article are cargo-driven with pax serving as a little extra revenue. Flying 60 people long-haul might be worth it if you could tack on a few million dollars worth of cargo.

[brique]

Houston-Lagos sounds like a purely oil-driven route : getting staff and equipment back and forth to the African oil-fields would be the main reason for it. My guess, its the cargo that's the main reason for it running, that kit is time-sensitive : a well not producing or  pipeline down waiting for a replacement widget-thingy costs millions...

[Budjet]

Let's face it, due to Ryanair's trial and error routing, they've got some weird ones! I'm based in Bremen and I understand some of them like to Portugal, Italy, UK and Spain... but why we have so many Baltic and Scandinavian flights is beyond me!
BRE -
HAU
NYO
RIX
TLL
TMP
TRF

and last summer to Poland.... Warsaw? No. Krakow? No. Gdansk? No.... Lodz?!? About 40 people a flight so they axed it, lol.

[Andre]

Let's face it, due to Ryanair's trial and error routing, they've got some weird ones! I'm based in Bremen and I understand some of them like to Portugal, Italy, UK and Spain... but why we have so many Baltic and Scandinavian flights is beyond me!
BRE -
HAU
NYO
RIX
TLL
TMP
TRF

and last summer to Poland.... Warsaw? No. Krakow? No. Gdansk? No.... Lodz?!? About 40 people a flight so they axed it, lol.

Scandinavians are the wealthiest people with the highest living standards on earth.. so why not fly there? Ryanair is very established on several Scandinavian airports. Norwegians fly more than any other people in the planet.

Your thinking is very German...

[mtnlion]

Yeah Bremen is very popular among Finnish football fans. And Tampere is only 2 hours from Helsinki, so lots of people use that service. I've been tempted to try it myself, but so far have always used Finnair/Lufthansa/SAS instead.

[Silentlysailing]

For a little bit Continental Airlines ran a flight that would take as little as 6 minutes from Houston George Bush/Intercontinental, to Ellington Field on the south side of Houston.

[swiftus27]

For a little bit Continental Airlines ran a flight that would take as little as 6 minutes from Houston George Bush/Intercontinental, to Ellington Field on the south side of Houston.

only if/when gas is realllllly cheap... too much of a hassle to get thru security post 9/11

[brique]

For a little bit Continental Airlines ran a flight that would take as little as 6 minutes from Houston George Bush/Intercontinental, to Ellington Field on the south side of Houston.

In the Orkneys :

'Loganair operates the world's shortest scheduled flight, Loganair Flight 353, taking only 2 minutes to hop between Westray Airport and Papa Westray Airport.'

Its the same airline that lands on the beach at Barra : an airline schedule governed by the tides, now that is odd.