Landline has been something of a chameleon. Yes it’s a bus operator that likes to masquerade as a regional airline, but it’s more than that. And now it is rolling out what is probably the most interesting and useful service yet: skip security in Boston and instead do it at a remote terminal.
You probably know Landline from its primary model of acting as a regional airline flying for a network carrier under that network carrier’s brand… but using buses instead of airplanes. It started with Sun Country, but it has good-sized and growing operations with both Air Canada and American. It was flying for United, but that disappeared. It now does the Fort Collins – Denver run on its own.
The American integration is the ideal way of doing this. Let’s say you’re flying from Atlantic City to Chicago. You show up at ACY and go through security. Then you board the bus and get dropped off at a gate in Philly behind security, ready for a connection without any additional screening. That kind of model works great, but it is a longer-distance bus model. You buy a ticket from an airport that is not the hub.
The latest offering is more of a regional bus service to help people who would normally just drive or get a ride to the largest airport in their metro area. In this case, it’s Massport which has partnered with Landline to try to make the Logan Express bus service something way better.
That’s not to say Logan Express isn’t useful today. It has frequent service from Logan to Back Bay, Braintree, Danvers, Framingham, and Woburn. I’m told all of those places are real. The buses run constantly and make it much easier for travelers than sitting on traffic-choked roads. The new plan, however, is even easier than that. It starts in Framingham on June 1. Say hello to the Logan Airport Remote Terminal.
Photo via Landline
When you arrive at the terminal in Framingham, you’ll see a very modest-looking ticket counter.
To start, this service is only for Delta and JetBlue customers as the tent cards suggest, but those are the two largest airlines at the airport anyway. These counters will be staffed by Landline employees who have the ability to check your bags. (I’m told they will be able to assist with reservation issues soon enough, but the primary focus is checking bags.)
After the bags are checked, you’ll go through a TSA-staffed secure checkpoint into a modest waiting room. For now, buses leave once per hour from 4am to 11am. They will drop you off either at gate A18 for Delta or C8 for JetBlue, and then you just walk right off and into the secure concourse while your bags get sent to the sorting area for your connection.
On the return, there is no special service. Travelers just claim bags and then head to the Logan Express bus which runs every 20 to 30 minutes from 6:20am to 1:15am. And of course, there are the regular Logan Express buses going from Framingham as well if you need to travel later in the day in that direction. Over time, this service will expand, but at least there are options until it does. This is really just a proof of concept that should spread elsewhere.
The cost? It’s just $9 one way, fully refundable. So if you buy a ticket and then your flight is delayed 5 hours? You can just refund and get a new one at the new time you need. This is exactly the kind of service that eVTOLs promised to provide but at a fraction of the cost. To me, this is the eVTOL killer.
Bookings are not done through the airline. You just go to loganremote.com and punch in your flight info. Then it gives you options. For example, if I have a Delta flight at 10:55am to LA, it gives me this:
Is this as seamless as buying a ticket from Atlantic City on American? No. This is not like an actual connection on a single airline ticket. This is still a separate service which I fully expect Delta and JetBlue to sell on their own at some point. But it’s not part of the ticket, so it would just be an after-purchase add-on.
For that price, it’s hard to imagine a good reason not to take this service. Not that Boston has had terrible security lines, but this just feels so much easier and more predictable. Probably the best reason I can think of for not taking it is… you live nowhere near Framingham.
Framingham, for those who don’t know is west of Boston just inside 495. I’ve actually been there since it is the hometown of my college roommate. There is a lot of population out there, though Massport already knows that since it has regular Logan Express service today.
I can’t imagine a world where this service makes money, not at those prices. But for Massport, it’s probably a whole lot easier and cheaper to build a little box of a terminal in Framingham than to build out more space at the airport. Sure, Framingham isn’t that big by itself, but if you imagine this network of buses from all over the area where people can go through security remotely, it becomes powerful.
Here’s a great example. Remember that in my post about Raleigh/Durham, I noted how they had to knock down American’s hub Terminal C to rebuild one that wasn’t much different… it just had more headhouse space for ticket counters, security, and baggage. Now imagine if they could instead have built remote terminals in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, whatever. You might not have needed to do that.
I realize it’s not that simple, but you can see the point. It’s a great option for travelers that has benefits for an airport. I’m looking at you, LAX FlyAway service. Put security in Van Nuys and you would have a lot of happy campers. Then put it in Long Beach. And you know what? I don’t even need a remote terminal. Let me go through security at the Long Beach Airport and take the bus up. Alright, they might not like that idea, but there are a lot of potential uses for something like this.
Congrats to Landline and Massport for getting something like this together. It had to have been a challenge to wrangle all of these different authorities, though I understand TSA was very eager to expand into something like this. They’ve now created something pretty great that needs to expand all over.
