[sofixa]

I don't get the point of this flight. A train between the two will be around two hours, so an hour slower than the plane, but when you add travel to airports, it's probably faster, and the trains are more comfortable (and you can work from them).

[bobthepanda]

Frankfurt is a major Lufthansa hub.

There is a train station at Frankfurt Airport, but a plane connection would be airside, and for connections having to travel to city center possibly with bags is a minus.

These days there is onboard wifi on most planes.

[kzrdude]

The ICE train going south towards Basel stops at the Frankfurt airport. The minus is that there is probably no train connecting directly to Strasbourg, but it's also not far away - take the stop at Offenburg and a train or shuttle bus to Strasbourg would do it.

[bobthepanda]

A two-seat connection that requires leaving the airport is hardly ideal for someone connecting through Frankfurt. People want to minimize the amount of legs on their journeys.

[mike_hock]

What about the 10x worse carbon footprint per passenger mile? At 2 flights per month it's a drop in the bucket so who cares. But replacing the trains with flights would be extremely wasteful.

[bobthepanda]

Ultimately, it seems like the price of carbon is not high enough to offset an entire cabin of business class seats of €1K+ each.

If you want the behavior to stop, increase the price of carbon. It’s all about the money in the end.

[jen20]

I’ve seen many references to “business class” here as if it were something special and thus worthy of additional scrutiny. On Lufthansa short haul flights, business is economy with the middle seats blocked.

[bobthepanda]

I mean, what it is doesn’t really matter if people are willing to pay €1k each, however silly it may be.

[dmurray]

The consumer in this case is the European Parliament. It's hard to think of anyone who would be less price-sensitive.

[soneil]

The hub part seems to be what's easily missed here. People aren't flying in from Frankfurt. They're flying in from all over the continent, and at the nearest major hub they're all packaged into one connecting flight to Strasbourg.

[ZeroGravitas]

Frankfurt is probably the closest international hub airport for people flying in from other countries.