For those of you planning on visiting us via flight arrivals/departures from Munich or Nuremberg, there are several ways for you to get to/from Regensburg to/from the airport.
- Train/Bus — check out the BayernTicket, because it’s great for a pretty low-cost, low-stress trip from anywhere in Bavaria to anywhere in Bavaria. The catch: it’s only valid one day at a time and you’re responsible to figure out your own subway/train/bus connections.
- Rental car — good flexbility, but more expensive, and do you really want to deal with traffic having just got off the plane or on your way down to the airport?
- Taxi — I shudder to think what this might cost,
- AirportLiner Regensburg — I used to think this was the best option because
- they’re reliable
- they’re fairly priceworthy
- they provide door-to-door service.
I think my opinion of them has changed. Read on.
AirportLiner Regensburg offers a pretty unique service; I myself have had good results with them. Their drivers have always been friendly and prompt, even in spite of rude/late/grumpy customers. The most trouble I have ever had with them was a failure to communicate a more specific pick-up time than the 1.5 hour window they gave me; but even that was no big deal — I just waited outside for longer than I needed to.
Then I heard about Matthias’ miserable AirportLiner experience, in which AirportLiner apparently couldn’t schedule a pickup for them themselves, but rather had to hire a taxi to pick him up and drop him off at some misunderstood rendezvous point, which nearly made him miss his flight (or maybe it did, I’m a little unclear on the details). But you know what? I thought it was just him. He seems like the kind of guy who gets rotten luck — order identical menu items at a restaurant, and his is the one that comes out undercooked. Ask for ketchup and mayo for your fries at a restaurant, and they’ll be out of mayo if Matthias is the one requesting it. Stuff like that.
Then Cristi and Adi came to visit from Romania. AirportLiner was late picking them up yesterday morning, and there were unexpected traffic problems on the highway down to the airport. These two factors lead to Cristi and Adi missing their check-in window at the airport by 10 minutes. Since it was an economy-class flight, CarpatAir 
was not obligated to let them rebook on a later flight. AirportLiner would assume none of the liability for them having missed their flight. The next feasible to flight home to Iasi would be Monday morning. So thanks to AirportLiner, Cristi and Adi’s trip got extended by 2 days. Fortunately their boss in Romania* just happened to be passing through the Munich airport on his way to Regensburg on the day that they were scheduled to head home, and he was able to arrange new flights home and a couple of nights’ stay at a hotel in Munich for them.
Bottom line: apparently not everyone has good luck with AirportLiner like Sarah and I have had. I’ll be rethinking my transportation options for my next flight. We fly economy all the time and also cannot afford to purchase new tickets simply because our ride to the airport did not come through for us.