Ahead of the 2028 Olympics, Brightline West is spending $21 billion to build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. What happens to flights when it launches?
Everyone’s Covering the Infrastructure Story
The aviation and travel press has done what it always does: treated this as an infrastructure milestone. “Look, rail is coming to America. California is building the future.” It’s a legitimate story. Brightline West is a genuine achievement for the US and a rebuke to decades of American underinvestment in passenger rail – if its federal loans materialize. It’s less of a response to vast European networks and more of the most pointed American solution possible.
But the infrastructure story is boring compared to the actual story, which is that the economics of sub-500-mile airline routes in America just fundamentally shifted.
Few in the aviation blogosphere is writing about what happens to Southwest’s Vegas strategy. Or how Spirit and Frontier lose a major revenue segment, one that they both desperately need to retain. What happens to Las Vegas tourism when the LA-to-Vegas corridor converts from mostly air traffic to mostly rail?
The Route That Prints Money
Las Vegas from Los Angeles is approximately 270 miles. Currently, it takes about an hour to fly, plus two hours of airport time (parking, TSA, boarding, deplaning, baggage claim). That’s three hours total, door-to-door, and you pay somewhere between $80 and $250 depending on carrier and time. Scant savings over a four hour and fifteen minute drive…