Oh yeah, air-rail agreements are obviously, absolutely made to make flying passengers more loyal to their airlines. But what difference does that make? If airlines take these sorts of partnerships seriously only out of their own interests, doesn’t that benefit North Carolinian train users, anyways?
For example... (click me)
Let’s say American Airlines lobbies Charlotte-Douglas to build a heavy rail station. They already want to build an airport people mover to hop across existing railroad tracks and connect to a possible light rail extension, anyways, so this isn’t too big of a stretch.
Once this station is built, it could become a part of the planned high-speed rail service between Atlanta and Charlotte. American Airlines could siphon off customers from Hartsfield-Jackson, Delta’s home turf, if they codeshare with Amtrak, Brightline, or whoever else decides to run that rail service.
If we’re lucky, Delta could respond by partnering with Amtrak, themselves (or NCDoT?) via RDU, effectively creating an airline turf war between eastern and western NC. etc. etc…
Even if you get just one of these "what-if"s to come true, a strategic investment by airlines for themselves still gets tangible infrastructure improvements that can be good for train operators and passengers, too.
Besides, low-cost carriers are giving Big Airline a run for its money, airline mileage programs’ futures are even being scrutinized by influential travel-hacking sites, and McKinsey is advocating for more multimodal ways to redeem miles. Even innovation-hating US-based airline companies have to see some value in innovating on their marketing and customer retention strategies. If there’s a way to do that and combat the growing stigma of flight-shaming, I highly doubt they’d just ignore it.