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An air shuttle is a scheduled airline service on short routes with a simplified fare and class structure. No exact definition exists, but the frequency is usually an hour or less and travel time is typically an hour or less. Network airlines may operate shuttle services as one-class or no-frill services, similar to low-cost airlines.
Air shuttles increasingly face competition from high-speed rail and many airlines withdraw from the market or reduce service shortly after competing high-speed rail services start.
Present-day commercial air shuttle services include:
Aeroflot has a frequent service between the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in Russia. It is now increasingly competing with Sapsan service by Russian Railways along the same route.
Air Canada’s RapidAir service between Toronto and Montreal as well as Toronto and Ottawa in Canada. The route is also served by WestJetSimplicity service and Porter Airlines with up to 200 flights every weekday between the three cities. Air Canada also offers hourly flights between Toronto and Vancouver. However, these flights last at least 4.5 hours.
Air FranceLa Navette service offers 80 flights a day from Paris-Orly Airport to Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice, and Toulouse, with a flight every 30–60 minutes. This service is used by more than 5.6 million travellers every year. LGV Méditerranée opening in 2001 and LGV Sud-Ouest opening in 2017 now connect Marseille and Bordeaux to Paris in under four hours, while extensions to Nice and Toulouse are planned. Paris-Toulouse is France's busiest air route. It was Paris-Lyon prior to the introduction of TGV service.
Alitalia (now ITA Airways) made about 60 flights per day between Rome Fiumicino and Milano Linate Airport in a service called ROMAMILANO. At the two airports the check-in counters and security checkpoints were reserved for the passengers of this service.
SAS also has a shuttle on the triangular route between Oslo Airport, Gardermoen (Norway), Stockholm-Arlanda Airport (Sweden) and Copenhagen Airport (Denmark) with up to hourly headways.
The route between Dublin and London is served by over 640 flights each week, with departures occurring on average every 20 minutes in each direction. The majority of the flights are operated by Aer Lingus, Ryanair and British Airways but CityJet also operates on the route. The route competes for the title of the busiest international air route in the world.
The routes between Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China), and between Hong Kong and Bangkok, Thailand, are served by multiple carriers providing frequent service with a frequency less than an hour during day time.
Qantas and QantasLink 'CityFlyer' service offers flights between major Australian capital cities on weekdays, with complimentary alcoholic afternoon drinks, newspapers, flexible fares and more frequent schedules. Flights between Sydney & Melbourne, and Brisbane & Sydney both take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes of flight time.
The busiest air routes in the world involve pairs of large cities in close proximity that rely on air transport due to a lack of high-speed rail, and the distance is large enough to discourage car driving. Several of the airports are on islands without road connection to the mainland.
