I live in the mountains in a rural area. Sometimes the cell service isn't great. I can go between two mountains and lose cell service for 1-2 minutes at a time while driving. When this happens I immediately get switched to one of my offline stations. Because this happens frequently, I am always getting switched to an offline station and never get to listen to anything else.
Pandora needs to buffer the entirety of the current song being played and the next track. That would be roughly 3-5 minutes of buffered music and would solve 99% of the cell network outages that I encounter whenever I drive.
In my opinion, offline stations are great when you are spending a significant amount of time somewhere with no cell coverage. They shouldn't be the default behavior when cell signal goes out for short duration. Pandora should be able to handle brief interruptions in cell service without changing your station.
Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity