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French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

reuters.com

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Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#231

Post by hadlock »

xur17 wrote: post #22
medium_burrito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because light rail/bus to airport is cheap, and $25 fares are cheap. And the trains are expensive. Now, why is flying so cheap vs a train? The whole the US government essentially gives away 737s at a loss to employ people might be one part of it? Nobody is giving away free trains that I know of.

> The whole the US government essentially gives away 737s at a loss to employ people might be one part of it? Do you have more information on this? Is the US government subsidizing aircraft manufacturing or something?

Boeing "is the largest U.S. goods exporter" and represents, pre 737-MAX fallout, about 5% of the US GDP. This might come as a surprise to east-coasters as for most of their existence they were based out of Seattle, and only recently moved their HQ to Chicago. Boeing sells a lot of civilian airplanes, but depending on the year/conflict 35-49% of Boeing's income comes from arms sales, either jets, cruise missiles, spy satellites or what have you. Boeing's manufacturing capacity plays a significant role in US wartime capability. Between Boeing and Weyerhaeuser, those two companies (and their cottage industries) prop up the lion's share of Washington State's economy, or at least it did pre-Microsoft/Intel/Amazon

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#232

Post by kmeisthax »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

I would not be surprised if airline companies lobbied for unrealistically short pre- and post-flight times - much like how they often sell really tight connections that result in you having to run halfway across O'Hare for some reason.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#233

Post by Clewza313 »

fredophile wrote: post #180
bluefirebrand wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally I think Calgary and Edmonton would be an ideal pair of cities to have some kind of high speed rail between. Would be a great alternative to air travel.

I'd agree in terms of distance and traffic between the two cities. However, the long, relatively severe winters would probably add some complications to high speed rail.

There are plenty of high-speed services (up to 350 km/h) in northern China, Korea, Japan and Russia, all of which have severe winters and (on the west coast of Japan) some of highest snowfalls on the planet.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#234

Post by js2 »

publicola1990 wrote: post #110
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to regularly travel from Edmonton to Calgary for work. When you add up the extra time required for flying, it's about a three hour trip (45 minutes in the air, the rest is getting to the airport, checking in, etc). Coincidentally, it's also about a three hour drive. My reasons for driving vs flying were usually to do with how long I'd be there. If I was going for one day then flying was preferable since fallin…

In general though flying is much safer than highway driving. If one wanted to minimize risk, one would always fly.

The difference in relative risk is high, but the absolute risk of dying in a car is still pretty low if you're sober, wearing a seatbelt, and not speeding. Oh, and apparently if you're not driving in the U.S. Geez, didn't realize we're such crappy drivers here.

https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.ht...

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#235

Post by Pasorrijer »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

If you're a frequent flier, and on the right route, most of those times go right down. I've walked into an airport 15 minutes before the flight, boarded the plane and gotten out of the airport 10 minutes after landing

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#236

Post by m463 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

> advertise more honest flight durations

that's an interesting concept.

I think that might have an unintended (good) consequence - could airports with lots of inefficiencies work on their passenger flow to be competitive?

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#237

Post by s0rce »

m463 wrote: post #236
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

> advertise more honest flight durations that's an interesting concept. I think that might have an unintended (good) consequence - could airports with lots of inefficiencies work on their passenger flow to be competitive?

Absolutely, I'm almost certain it could be as efficient as a train as most of the security is pointless theater. When I was flying more often I would leave much less time and usually not miss my flight. Sure, something could go wrong and I would miss it but the hours saved not sitting at the airport outweighed a potential occasional missed flight and the extra time that would take to re-book and come back.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#238

Post by bluGill »

closeparen wrote: post #218
fredophile wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search on Google tells me that train goes at 160 km/h. Not exactly high speed. It looks like they don't run into too many problems with weather related cancelations or delays though [0]. [0] https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/article/74614/norway-rai...

Amtrak generally averages about half that, so it seems pretty good.

Amtrak mostly runs 1950s train service or worse. Don't use them as an example of anything.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#239

Post by bluGill »

pochamago wrote: post #107
xalava wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is pretty exceptional in its lack of rails. There is also a Seattle-San Diego. Enjoyable as a tourist, but probably not suited for business purposes except in the last portions. In France some high speed trains go now directly to airports (CDG,LYO). So it is becoming possible to chain a plane and a train in a few scenarios.

It's not really that the US lacks rails, we have the largest rail network in the world. The problem for passenger rail here is population density. France is three and a half times denser, and Japan is nearly 10x. I think they would also struggle a bit more to justify rail costs if they were as spread out as the US.

Population in the US is not uniform. Out east we are as dense as Europe. Even the Midwest isn't much less dense than France for selected areas the size of France. Then there is the vast amount of nothing out west.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#240

Post by davchana »

ipqk wrote: post #58
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

Just put a large tax if the short, domestic flight isn't a connecting flight. Short, domestic flight by itself: 100€ Short, domestic flight part of an international itinerary: +30€ It'll mostly work itself out.

That would kill what Google Flights call Hacker Fare (& many others too before Google). Essentially you buy a local leg ticket, & another leg ticket, international in your example. Both airlines does not know about other legs (although thus not responsible for any delay or missing nezt leg).
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