The small bus

On November29, 2018, I had the pleasure to travel by plane to the Cyberspace Conference in the Czech city of Brno. Lufthansa flew me from Düsseldorf (DUS/EDDL) to Munich(MUC/EDDM), where I had to board a connecting flight to Brno (BRQ/LKTB),operated by BMI regional.

I arrived at the gate just in time for the boarding. I was the first to go through theself-boarding-gates where passengers have to get their boarding passes scanned.The BMI plane was parked at an apron position, so a bus ride to the plane was to be expected. Of course, I had to wait because „Business Class, Hon Circle members,  Senators, and Star AllianceGold Card holders” were asked to go through the boarding process first. When my quick-boarding-gate was activated, I went downstairs, where a surprisingly small minibus waited. The driver was just instructing the aforementioned priority-boarding people to go „all the way through“ the bus, because it was expected to be quite crowded. It is possible to overload a transfer bus even with the few (like 20) passengers for Brno, if you just choose a small enough bus.  Indeed it got really uncomfortable after the 20 passengers had boarded the minibus with its limited space (about 12seats at the most). Upon being told to „go! all! the! way! through!“ an American traveller asked in a rather annoyed tone „Why not get a bigger bus?“. On the way to the BMI plane, some of the bus’s occupants worried over how small the aircraft would be when they used such a small bus for transfer. The worrying was unnecessary because BMI’s Embraer 145 is a small but not too small aircraft. It seemed even bigger after the ride in the minibus. During the ride, we passed a normal transfer bus with only three people on it. The American yelled:„That’s not fair! They’ve got the big bus!“

Interior of a BMI Embraer 145 on its way to Brno (2018)