Where Do You Think You're Going?

Those quotes are actually on the road signs. However, according to non-canon material, “everyone still calls it ’Bustleburg-Greenswift Regional’ except those nostalgic for 2002 when it was still called ’Highchrist-Wage Lil’ Ol’ Flying Field.’”

Like most US cities, Bustleburg used to have more airlines. National, Republic, TWA, Eastern, Ozark, Piedmont, and Branniff could take you to exciting destinations like New York, Miami, and Little Rock.

Things changed. Now Bustleburg has Pigeon Essential Air Services. (EAS is a real thing.)

Sidebar: Do you waste time on Expedia or Kayak planning trips you’ll never take? If not, choose a remote country, then pick a Monday or Friday a month away. Don't enter your credit card information.

A trip may be booked from Houston to Bangui, Central African Republic via Doha, Nairobi, and Kampala. If you leave on June 22nd, you’ll arrive June 25th. The most creative route I found? Houston to Minsk, Belarus. Kayak, via a site called Kiwi, planned to route me from Houston to Cancun to Manchester, England to Minsk. What stops Belarussians from abandoning the itinerary in Cancun?

Pigeon Airlines can beat that. First, remember leaving Bustleburg is nigh on impossible. But, let’s say, for some reason, you live in Bustleburg, you managed to leave, and want to come back.

In the non-canon story, Professor Teague’s father-in-law returns home from London. Considering Bustleburg’s closest real-life metropolises are St. Louis and Memphis, a sensible airline would do Heathrow-Chicago-Memphis-Bustleburg. Pigeon routed the man: London-Inverness-Shannon-Gander-Toronto-Cleveland-Memphis-Burbank-Boise-St. Louis-Bustleburg. Using DC-3 aircraft or an almost-new Quest Kodiak if they're feeling fancy. Additional charge for seat belts.

However, the plane landed at the wrong airport (Bustardsville, on the other side of Arkanois) and the father-in-law finished the trip by bus. The professor believes if his father-in-law had deplaned in Memphis and bicycled to Bustleburg, he would have arrived earlier.

I have characters fly in for the “The Grand Tour,” and they didn’t complain about being routed around the country, so…let’s figure that out. If you have frequent flyer miles on Pigeon, you must fly the route they assign? Aha. That was the father-in-law’s mistake. If Pigeon Airlines feels like it, they’ll do New York - Boston via Tierra del Fuego. (Take that, Kiwi.)

Meanwhile, the Grand Tour characters opted not to fly the airline “four times more likely to have an in-flight failure than other US carriers” (What real airline is this? Here you go. ) until they had to. So they obtained a direct flight from St. Louis and were only four hours late.

Wait. Flights can’t be daily otherwise they would have arrived yesterday, so they wouldn’t be late for the tour. OMG. The logical flaws are constant when you make things up!

So actually it’s Pigeon Essential-Only-On-Tuesday Air Services.