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#8678 point to point air club

How hard would it be to arrange an ad-hoc arrival and departure at an airport for a 747? If the answer is "not impossible", then this idea might work. (disclaimer, I think I already posted something like this. Consider this a refinement.) Get a plane and a web site and a group of admin people who are superb at figuring out arrangements. Then open up for people to join the flying club. You join, then put in possible travel plans way in advance. You can see what routes other people are thinking about to see what's more popular and more likely to actually happen. Then when some cut-off point occurs, whether enough people interested or 6 months ahead or whatever, then an itinerary is laid out and people get the chance to buy a ticket. Those who already expressed interest are given first priority. This works out to the plane flying an irregular schedule around the world. The admin team then arranges arrival and departure with each airport. As long as passengers are buying their point to point ticket, it's cheaper to run than other airlines, since each passenger is in the air for a shorter amount of time. Of course, you could actually have a bus-like stop to stop that's actually more or less on course that would work as well. I.e. the plane goes to New Zealand and then on to Australia. People could buy tickets for both legs and still come out ahead. Could this run as private travel rather than commercial? I don't know. But cool if it did and we could manage our own security/baggage/etc. I could also see classes being divided up differently, since this may not be too appealing to business and first. I could also see a more communal culture being developed where people help each other with bags and share food, because hey, you're all part of the same club. While this does depart (npi) from the traditional set airline schedule (Now with 5 flights a day to Miami!), I move that that is a very airline-centric way of looking at it. And this isn't just because it was only a few years ago that I realized there even was a set schedule. Airlines think like train schedules. Passengers do not. They commute on schedules. They fly more like taking a road trip. Whenever that plane going to where I wanna go leaves, I'm gettin on it.

Update: After being informed by pilot friend Will, who was skeptical of this idea at first until he had to take 6 planes and a rental car to get home since he flies standby, that it takes a toooon of capital to start an airline, I thought, okay just have a major airline put 1 or 2 of their planes on this schedule? I still hold that there may be no real reason for the set schedule other than historic reasons.
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