Easiest Way to get from Munich Airport to Prague
 

We will be returning our rental van to Munich Airport before we go to Prague for 4 nights.

I've been looking for some low cost carriers for a one way flight Munich to Prague, not having a lot of luck, pretty expensive.

Trains seem to take about 4 hrs?

Don't want to drive :O

That's why on this leg there is substantial competition from bus companies:
http://en.busliniensuche.de
The IC Buses are comfortable - cannot say much about the other companies.

One very few call at Munich airport, though.
So you have to either take any of the S-Bahn linies from the airport to Hackerbrücke, which is the stop for the Central Bus Station.
Or drop off your car at Munich Centrail (Train) Station - which is just one stop by S-Bahn from the bus station.

If you wish to stick to rail, I *think* the direct ALEX trains call at Freising (but pls double check that) - which is near to the airport with a bus connection every 20min. These trains take pretty long to Prague and are somewhat sub-standard as what you'd expect on a long-distance train. So no ICE/ bullet train look and feel (nor speed).

AFAIK, Deutsche Bahn offers only an odd connection which makes you take a train to Nuremberg and change to an IC Bus there.

I agree with Cowboy about the IC buses being comfortable. I took one from Nuremberg to Prague and thought it was a very good experience. And I generally hate buses and love trains.

If you take the train you'll be switching to the bus in Nuremberg for a 5 hour journey. The direct train takes much longer - 6 hours.

I don't see any trains that take 4 hours.

Flixbus (https://www.flixbus.com) is the market leader. The bus leaves every day except Tuesdays from München Main Station at 8:00 a.m. and arrives in Prague at 1:15 p.m. The fare is €33.00 if you book your ticket online.

You should return your rental car in München downtown.

Otherwise, you take the S-Bahn from the airport to the main station. The ride takes 42 minutes and the fare is €10.40 p.p.

I took the IC bus from Prague to Munich earlier this year & agree that they are comfortable. One is assigned a seat on the upper level. Lower level contains the bathroom and vending machines. Took 4 hrs. Originally thought it would be a slog but time flew by. I would recommend this.

Forgot to add that the buses depart at the train stations
on both cities.

I'm not having any luck with either bus site. https://www.flixbus.com told me "Unfortunately no drive is available for the selected dates. Please try again for another tour date". http://en.busliniensuche.de told me something similar.

I tried to check for the Tuesday in July we need, figured the first time I got the message that you couldn't search that far ahead, so tried a search for next Tuesday.....same messages.

Anyway,thanks for the help, I think it's beginning to look like we bite the bullet and fly. I really don't want to drive into the center of Munich to drop off the the rental (it will be a van, there will be 6 of us) for a train that takes so much time.

Long-distance buses depart in Munich from the Central Bus Station (or ZOB in German), which is not too far from the Main Railway Station (Hauptbahnhof) - a bit less than 1/2 mile - but not adjacent.

The Central Bus Station (ZOB) is served by S-Bahn via the directly adjacent station "Hackerbrücke" - which is a stop on the route of either S-Bahn line 1 or 8 which connect the airport with the city.

While Flixbus is one of major bus companies in Germany, it is not the market leader for Munich - Prague services.
There are a dozen or so services per day - with only one operated by Flixbus.
To get the full picture of what services at which costs are available, you should use the meta search engine for coach travel in Germany:
http://en.busliniensuche.de

July 2015 is still too far in advance for any bookings.
I would not bother to look until 3 months in advance.