In 2021 and 2022, Brent Skorup and I wrote papers and articles on an idea we called “planepooling”—shifting regional air travel from a system of big planes and big airports to one of small planes and small airports. The model we suggested resembled Uber’s ride-sharing products (UberPool and its successor, UberX Share) and were based on years-earlier proposals by aviation pioneers Burt Rutan and Bruce Holmes. Here, I summarize those pieces and, in particular, describe how planepooling could revitalize rural, small-town, and exurban economies—improving and stabilizing those communities’ healthcare along the way.
Our 2021-2022 pieces included:
“Planepooling and Air Taxis for Post-COVID Aviation,” by Brent Skorup and Robert Graboyes, published by Mercatus Center at George Mason University, November 17, 2021 (research summary and full working paper).
“Planepooling: It’s Time to Reinvent Regional Air Travel,” by Robert Graboyes and Brent Skorup, published by Mercatus Center at George Mason University, November 17, 2021.
“Planepooling: Reinventing Regional Air Travel,” by Robert Graboyes and Brent Skorup, published by InsideSources, January 11, 2022.
(NOTE: Some of the text below is recycled from those three pieces.)
The Nashville-Asheville Problem
It’s been said that in the Southeastern United States, whether your soul is headed for Heaven or Hell, it will have to change planes in Charlotte or Atlanta. Thus is the notoriety of commercial aviation’s hub-and-spoke system.
In “Planepooling and Air Taxis for Post-COVID Aviation” and “Planepooling: It’s Time to Reinvent Regional Air Travel,” we described what we called the “Nashville-to-Asheville Problem”—the long, multistage odyssey involved in a 200-mile hop from Smyrna, Tennessee to Asheville, North Carolina. We explored planepooling as a way to make the trip faster, less stressful, less arduous, and less susceptible to fingernail-biting worries about missed flights.
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