Starting June 1 it becomes possible for Delta and JetBlue passengers to check in at Boston’s Logan airport, and even clear security, without actually going to the Boston airport.
Landline, which is known for replacing short flights with buses (especially but not only with American Airlines in Philadelphia and at Chicago O’Hare) has opened up a new check-in facility in Framingham, Massachusetts (at 19 Flutie Pass, Framingham MA)that passengers can treat as the front door to the airport.
They park for a lot less than the garage at Logan, drop bags and go through TSA, and then they take a bus that drops them off past security at the airport.
This is the first remote airport screening facility in North America. And it’s an interesting way for passengers to avoid congested airport processes, and airports to avoid packed headhouses as they grow. There’s no reason that there cannot be several of these for a single major hub airport, and in fact they’re already planning for another one of these in Braintree.
Landlines CEO David Sunde explains,
People love traveling — they just hate everything it takes to get there. The traffic, the parking, the lines, the chaos — all of those little uncertainties add up to a real headache before you ever reach your seat. We built Landline to fix that. With the Framingham facility, we’re not just building a bigger front door to Logan — we’re building a new one, closer to where people actually live. Massport had the vision to see that the airport experience doesn’t need to be confined to a single footprint anymore, and together we’re taking the first step toward a future where the airport is directly connected to the communities it serves.
They’re offering 8 bus departures a day between this facility and Boston Logan to start, with service departing on the hour. Frequency is expected to increase as demand grows. The drive takes 40 minutes in the early morning, and up to 1:20 during rush hour. There are two drop-off locations at the airport:
- Terminal A gate A18 near Delta flights
- Terminal C gate C8 near JetBlue
Cost:
- The cost for a bus ride is $9 per adult with children under 18 free
- Parking is available (limited) at $29 per day, compared to an undiscounted $37 – $49 at Logan airport.
You aren’t going to want to show up in Framingham too early – you’ll find only seating, restrooms, vending machines, and water in terms of amenities.
And you’re still going to deal with the drive to the airport, but someone else drives and you avoid the chaos of Boston’s airport pre-security. Landline recommends arriving 45 minutes ahead of scheduled bus departure time, and that’s when luggage check-in closes (TSA closes 35 minutes prior to departure). Each bus holds 55 passengers.
This takes the Landline model where people do check-in and bag drop at a regional airport, clear security and then travel by bus to their major airport connection as though the bus were a plane. American has this in Philadelphia and Chicago O’Hare.
In-town check-in has existed for decades, but almost none of it lets the passenger clear security downtown, check their bags, and arrive airside. Mostly these locations just offer a boarding pass and bag drop. You may be familiar doing it at Hong Kong Airport Express, KL Sentral, Taipei Main Station, Vienna CAT, and Dubai city check-in.
Emirates offers in-home check-in but that just sends an agent to your house to collect your bags and give you a boarding pass. It doesn’t eliminate airport security screening.
Some, like Hong Kong’s Macau ferry transfer, offer immigration clearance. On arrival at the Hong Kong airport from Macau passengers stay inside the restricted-transfer system but it is not the same as clearing passenger security at a downtown terminal and then riding sterile transport to the airport. There’s still security at the Hong Kong SkyPier.
Lufthansa tested first class home-to-aircraft bypassing the terminal entirely, but that was over a year ago and it hasn’t become a commercial reality. It also wouldn’t have been available at scale the way this is.
Real progress, of course, will be when short takeoff and landing aircraft arrive in 3-4 years and we can move beyond in-town check-in, skipping the traditional airport entirely. There’s no need for long runways, a large parking lot and doublewide trailer are fine. And distributing air traffic away from airports could ease congestion as well.
It’s creative, affordable, and gets the job done? For shorter distances to/from major metro areas, seems like a fine idea. Let’s use everything available in our tool kit from buses to trains, too.
And how, exactly, is the cordon sanitaire maintained on the bus? Are there security personnel on each trip? How are these buses screened before each day’s service?
This seems like a great way to save money on EAS flights AND those EAS cities could have the “terminal” near the center of town and be walkable/busable for many more people than how difficult is often is to get to the small airport without a car.
I’m not sure who would want to use, but it’s definitely not me. Seems like a waste of time to arrive “45 mins before the bus leaves” considering I also will want some buffer to walk around BOS as the airport is quite large.
Seems a lot more convenient to me to just show up at the airport, but hey, I’m sure this will tickle somebody’s fancy, and that means less crowding for those of us trying to use the airport screening!
@Denver Refugee — “cordon sanitaire…” ooh lala… so fancy! Ah, yes, Boston Logan… notorious for ‘security’… *facepalm*
This is a nice idea. I might consider something like this if it were available in the DC area. They could offer first class bus seats too.
@Barry Graham — That’d actually make a lot of sense for DC to Dulles or BWI, since they are farther from the city center, or say, from Richmond to Dulles. Otherwise, Amtrak/regional rail may work better from BWI. Not sure if you were joking about First Class bus services, but in some parts of the world, they actually are quite nice (think, nearly lie-flat, plush recliners).
Did a dummy booking and parking is $7 per day, not $29