Air Travel’s Next Upgrade Is Checking In at the Mall

Air travel may have rebounded, but the process of actually catching a flight has not.

From parking to check-in to baggage, security and boarding, this friction-filled outdated routine is the stuff of nightmares — and that’s when there aren’t any delays.

It’s also why David Sunde founded the The Landline Company, explaining to PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that the company’s new plans include turning underutilized real estate near airports into next generation aviation infrastructure hubs.

“Anywhere that is a natural gathering place, like an old shopping mall, that location can eventually become a node,” Sunde told PYMNTS. “If we can push traffic to [existing] places that are well suited to handle it, but just aren’t being used today because of a business model failure, that’s a great place for us to be.”

But it’s not just traffic and parking. Landline wants to take all of travel’s worst bottlenecks and pinch points out of airports and put them in refreshed adjacent properties.

It might seem far-fetched, but this travel company’s business model has already been backed by investors via a $28 million fund raise in April, and is also partnered with American Airlines, United Airlines and Sun Country Airlines, as well as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) .

A Distributed Airport

Sunde describes the door-to-door business model as providing a “distributed airport” network that leverages convenient, off-site locations for predeparture travel services, including flight check-in, baggage handling and even security clearance, before boarding a spiffed up motor coach from nearby access hubs to their final destinations.

Landline customers simply show up to a hub, check their luggage, check themselves in to their flight, go through a TSA-approved screening process, and sit back as Landline takes them to their destination.

“Airlines use Landline to connect to cities that have service to their networks, and we’re frequently used to add points onto route maps that aren’t actually airports. The best example of this in our network is Breckenridge [Colorado], where we literally drop travelers off right at the bottom of the mountain, letting travelers relax on the way and have all their bags and security taken care of — you can actually clear security before getting on [one of our] motor coaches that takes you to the gate.”

The concept of building offsite hubs where travelers can check in, check bags and be screened comfortably is a promising one.

Landline’s vehicles are state-of-the-art and fully equipped with leather seats, free Wi-Fi, in-seat power and free streaming entertainment. Partner airlines leverage these vehicles as if they are part of their air fleet, letting customers connect using different transportation options in order to reach their desired destinations.

“Doing that requires a lot of work with regulators, a lot of work with airports, a lot of work with the airlines,” Sunde said.

The experience is designed to be an enjoyable one that takes the stress and hassle out of travel.

Future Growth

Landline has raised $38 million to date. That funding comes alongside revenue generated by airlines purchasing capacity on Landline’s vehicles.

“We’re a fast-growing startup,” Sunde told PYMNTS, “and we have to be good at having 90 to 120 days of visibility into what the schedule plan is. That’s a little bit more art than science at this point. Like with most enterprise B2B companies, there’s a lag or gap really between when a customer makes a purchase and when we get paid, but the trick is understanding how we are going to support our growth in a really efficient way by understanding what our trajectory looks like, what staffing levels we need, the number of vehicles we need — everything in our business really comes down to reliability.”

The company also increasingly makes money by acting as an owner-operator of their own airport infrastructure. “When our partner doesn’t have a presence in a station they want to open, we provide [that] for them — the agents, the computers, all that stuff — and going forward we see that as a consistent opportunity for us,” Sunde said.

What’s not to like for airlines? They get the revenue but don’t have to service these connecting locations with either their planes or their people — Landline takes care of everything.

Landline sees future solutions, pending regulatory approval, as those connecting industrial parks, corporate campuses, cruise ports and other convenient locations.

“You look at where hub airports are built in the U.S., and for the most part expansion is off the table. You’re not going to be able to make SFO [San Francisco International Airport] bigger — it’s bounded on three sides by water and on the other side by a major freeway. Same with LAX [Los Angeles International Airport], same with LaGuardia. A lot of our infrastructure is meant to support places where expansion is not an option for the airports,” Sunde said. “And one of the United States’ best assets is our aviation infrastructure, we have thousands of existing airports.”

Just as he told PYMNTS previously, “If one airline has a better real estate footprint outside the airport than another, long term that can be really differentiating.”