ECONOMIES OF VOLUME?

In the early days of airline deregulation, and particularly in the wake of the breakdown of OPEC's price agreements, the hub-and-spoke network and smaller jets and turboprops (with the Boeing 737 the largest such plane, and smaller planes with as few as 28 seats) looked like a way to extend the benefits of air travel to the smallest communities.  When fuel prices rise, the laws of physics change the economics of those planes.

Airlines are getting rid of these planes – their least-efficient – in response to the high cost of fuel. Delta, United Continental, and other big airlines are expected to park, scrap or sell hundreds of jets with 50 seats or fewer in coming years. Small propeller planes are meeting the same fate.

The loss of those planes is leaving some little cities with fewer flights or no flights at all.

The Airports Council International says 27 small airports in the continental U.S., including St. Cloud, Minn., and Oxnard, Calif., have lost service from well-known commercial airlines over the last two years. More shutdowns are planned.

Travelers in cities that have lost service now must drive or take buses to larger airports. That adds time and stress to travel. St. Cloud lost air service at the end of 2009 after Delta eliminated flights on 34-seat turboprops. Now, passengers from the city of 66,000 have a 90-minute drive to the Minneapolis airport 65 miles to the southeast.

The intercity bus network is almost nonexistent, and the Amtrak service to St. Cloud and to Oxnard is skimpy, and the trains don't necessarily stop near the hub airports.  On the other hand, the idea of a 34-seat plane with a crew of at least three calls up memories of the interurban railways, which had a hard time meeting expenses with a 40-seat car and a crew of two, later reduced to one.  There's a reason for the expression "mass transportation."