Skybus has said they plan to start flying around May 20 of this year. Now, that’s less than two months away and we know very little about this airline. They’ve clearly taken the opposite approach of Virgin America here. Instead of pushing everything out into the public eye, they’re keeping it all very close to the vest. So what can we figure out?

Well I believe they’ve said that the first routes will be out of their home base in Columbus (Ohio). That makes sense, of course, but we don’t know where those planes will go. This YouTube video shows some test runs landing at Burbank airport, just outside of Los Angeles, last week.

So could we see Burbank-Columbus on the route map in the beginning? Quite possibly. I like the route, but if they do go with the “cram a ton of seats on the plane” strategy, I do wonder about how reliably the plane can make the flight nonstop from those short runways.

This Airliners.net thread also points to a proving run last week into Pease Airport (New Hampshire), about 50 miles north of Boston. That’s about the same distance as Manchester from Boston and a little closer than Providence. So, it’s not a bad idea. If they really do go with Ryanair style $1 fares (or less), they have a chance to draw traffic out there.