Jet fuel costs have nearly doubled since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. This is obviously straining the overall economics of air travel, but the most impacted segment is the one that has always been tenuous: short-haul flights.
As I understand it, airlines generally prefer flights that are at least 2 hours long. Takeoff and landing consume the most fuel, and add a lot of wear and tear on a plane's equipment, so you want a long enough flight to amortize these costs. This is why for the 10 years spanning 2016 to 2026, US flights spanning less than 250 miles declined by 11% — the largest drop of any route length.
Now, in some cases, these short-haul flights are simply necessary loss leaders. For example, the flight from Milwaukee to Chicago is comically short. It's only about 70 miles, translating into an actual cruising time of around 20 minutes. But it's an important route for connecting passengers and the overall hub-and-spoke airline model.
This also makes it slightly harder for rail to effectively compete, because you need to solve for two clear passenger demands (again, assuming they're connecting): (1) people leaving Milwaukee will want to check their bags at the point of departure and (2) they don't want to arrive downtown, they want to arrive at the airport for their connecting flight.
That said, both of these wants are solvable. Hong Kong, for instance, allows in-town check-in where passengers drop their bags downtown before boarding the airport train. This is particularly convenient if you have to check out of your hotel and need to rid yourself of your luggage until you arrive at your final destination.
Very cool, so what's my point?
I mention all this because if short-haul flights are the flight segment that airlines don't love to operate, then it only strengthens the opportunity for high-speed rail to fill this gap in the market and become a seamless component of overall global mobility.
Here in Canada, the obvious opportunity is the Toronto-Montreal corridor. This is arguably the single best opportunity in North America when you consider its geography, construction viability (lots of undeveloped land to lay new track), and ability to replace short-haul flights. The broader Windsor-Quebec City corridor is also, as we know, the densest part of Canada with roughly 50% of our entire population.
But the overall opportunity is twofold: it will service origin-destination travel and it will connect Toronto and Montreal as global airport hubs. In fact, this is one of the stated reasons for why Air Canada joined the high-speed Alto project as a core consortium partner:
Connections with other modes of transport, such as rail or bus, are part of the solutions the company is already developing to offer the most relevant mobility option, responding in a sustainable way to the specific needs of each of its customers. In the longer term, the contribution of its expertise to the Cadence team will enable the airline to contribute to the harmonious integration of a future intercity rail network with existing airport hubs in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, for the benefit of all travellers.
Here's a specific example. Montreal largely serves as Canada's direct gateway to France's secondary cities, Francophone Africa, and the Mediterranean. So if you live in Toronto and want to fly to Marseille or Algiers or Mallorca, you are going to connect in Montreal (or connect across the Atlantic somewhere in Europe).
The multi-modal train option would include an in-town baggage check at Union Station in Toronto, a 3-hour train ride to Montreal, a seamless rail connection from Gare Centrale to YUL (with the REM airport train set to open in 2027), and then your flight to Europe or Africa.
The overall travel time should be comparable, except in the high-speed rail option you'd have more uninterrupted time to work, watch a movie, or sleep. And now that Air Canada gets to rid itself of its less profitable (or unprofitable?) short-haul flights, it should have the margin to aggressively market these tickets.
If this customer experience is designed properly — with one booking, competitive fares, clean transfers, and convenient baggage handling — it will quickly dominate the market. We know this because it's already working in Europe.