“Flixbus paints German streets green again.” With these words, Flixbus announces its restart after the great corona crisis. The green buses were forced to stop for more than two months. Now it should start slowly. From May 28, the first connections are scheduled again, Flixbus announced. A total of 50 stops from the original network are available for travelers to start with.
Flixbus approaches these goals again
Sure, various major cities are part of the start. For example Berlin, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Munich. But also smaller cities like Bayreuth, Himmelkron, Titisee-Neustadt, Weimar and Wolpertshausen.
The restart of Flixbus is not limited to Germany. Flixbus is again active in restricted operation in Austria, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark. Flixbus has announced that additional goals are to be added step by step. In the end, what matters is customer demand.
Flixbus has developed a hygiene concept in recent weeks in order to be able to provide security for travelers and employees. The most important message here is that all buses are thoroughly disinfected after each trip. Entrances and exits are initially only possible via the rear door on the bus while maintaining a safety distance of at least 1.5 meters. As usual with Flixbus, ticket control takes place in contactless form. There is sufficient disinfectant available for passengers in the buses themselves.
In addition, as with Lufthansa, wearing mouth and nose protection is mandatory during the entire journey in a Flixbus. The control authorities alone are responsible for checking the wear, not the Flixbus staff. So you shouldn’t be surprised if passengers travel without a mask.
You also have to be prepared for the fact that all seats in the Flixbus you have booked are occupied. The Flixbus concept for restart does not explicitly provide for an additional seat to remain free. Flixbus boss André Schwämmlein said this “Handelsblatt”: “No means of transport can be operated economically with only 50 percent utilization.”
BlaBlaBus and Pinkbus are still covered
At competitor Pinkbus, it looks a little different. There they want to temporarily limit the bus utilization to 50 percent after the resumption of operations. This guarantees each passenger a free free side seat.
However, it is not yet certain when the pink buses will be rolling again in express traffic between Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. “We would like to wait the next few weeks to see how demand develops,” a spokeswoman for Pinkbus told inside digital. “At the moment it is not big enough to drive economically.”
Meanwhile, Pinkbus is preparing a hygiene concept in the background, the spokeswoman continued. “Here, the requirements in the individual federal states are still very different and traveling by long-distance bus is not yet officially included in the hygiene protection ordinance.” It is also not yet clear whether and which data of passengers must be recorded similarly to restaurants. “Therefore, from our point of view and for the safety of our passengers, it makes no sense to restart operations prematurely.”
A spokesman for the company did not want to reveal how far preparations for a restart at BlaBlaBus have progressed. It is currently not yet possible to say when BlaBlaBus will drive again.
What will become of the Flixtrain?
The Flixtrain, meanwhile, has not yet returned to its usual form. The restart on the rail apparently still takes a few weeks or even months after it has crashed properly between FlixMobility and the train operator BahnTouristikExpress. Finding a new partner, for example serving the route between Cologne and Hamburg or between Cologne and Berlin, is obviously not that easy. FlixMobility is hopeful that FlixTrain operations will continue to run as planned this year.
