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You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

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Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#41

Post by Ensorceled »

michaelfeathers wrote: post #30
Ensorceled wrote: post #27

The worst part of my flight, and most of the time the largest part, is the Home->Gate->Plane part. Why would I pay to optimize the least unpleasant part of the journey? Give me a way to skip the whole "everybody is a possible terrorist" fiasco and now we're talking ...

Few people now remember it, but back in the earlier days of commercial aviation flying was a breeze. You could walk up to a counter, buy a ticket, walk to the gate and walk on. It was that way for a long while.

Yeah, I remember the days of "arrive 30 minutes early for international flights just to be on the safe side". Now the "rule" is you can't even fly if you arrive that "late" for an international flight.

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#42

Post by yew »

zanny wrote: post #39
zurn wrote: post #17

We're not nearly cheap enough: The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost of flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions. Further working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the 2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.

I have to think the only reason trains pretty much died as an industry in the last hundred years is due to government fiddling or poor infrastructure maintenance. In a trifecta of balancing cost to time to carrying weight, trains should almost always win, with cars never winning in any of them and planes winning only at time investment. Yet we all drive cars (which win in being personal transport where free wheels in…

Trains didn't die as an industry. Actually the US has an exceedingly good (privately-owned) freight rail system, compared to the rest of the world (assuming you're talking about the US from the Amtrak reference).

What did happen is that Amtrak was displaced by said freight rail system. It doesn't really own any rail - everything is under contract, with freight getting first priority contractually. Though it also has other issues.

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#43

Post by ajhit406 »

The article is correct to a large extent. But I'm surprised it didn't mention the elite group who fly considerably faster: private jet owners and corporate jet "beneficiaries".

These individuals are not nearly as price sensitive as the average consumer, and face much larger opportunity costs when sitting around at the airport or moving slowly in flight.

With some of the newer (and very expensive) private jets like the Gulfstream 650 and Citation X, passengers benefit from an approximately 15-20% flight time savings (depending on the length of the trip and desired fuel efficiency). This is a considerable amount of time for most c-level execs of large companies.

However, where I personally see the biggest time advantage in flying private is the process of actually boarding and securing the plane. Private jets and smaller airports are orders of magnitude more efficient.

Pulling up to a hangar at Van Nuys instead of waiting 2 hrs in the delta check-in line at LAX is well worth the extra money to the ultra rich. Time from pulling into the airport in your car to takeoff can be as little as 10 minutes.

In the late 1990's, as research on super sonic flight was becoming very popular, there seemed to be a divergence in thought: One camp was for larger, slower, but more comfortable airplanes; and the other for smaller, sleeker, uncomfortable supersonic rollercoaster rides through the stratosphere.

It would be interesting to see airlines' market research around higher speed aircraft, and whether there was enough demand for super sonic flights. My intuition tells me they did perform this research, and the data told them that it wasn't economically feasible.

With the introduction of the A380 and other mega jumbos on the way, it became clear that the conclusion is that we'd all prefer to fly slower, but more comfortably. Though, while it appears we only have 2 market segments, super expensive and super cheap, there are some companies who are innovating on the fringes to make private jets more accessible.

NetJets and FlexJet are the first few that come to mind. Maybe there's a YC company that can further optimize this market? I for one would love to travel out of smaller airports if there were more options...

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#44

Post by jmilkbal »

yew wrote: post #42
zanny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to think the only reason trains pretty much died as an industry in the last hundred years is due to government fiddling or poor infrastructure maintenance. In a trifecta of balancing cost to time to carrying weight, trains should almost always win, with cars never winning in any of them and planes winning only at time investment. Yet we all drive cars (which win in being personal transport where free wheels in…

Trains didn't die as an industry. Actually the US has an exceedingly good (privately-owned) freight rail system, compared to the rest of the world (assuming you're talking about the US from the Amtrak reference). What did happen is that Amtrak was displaced by said freight rail system. It doesn't really own any rail - everything is under contract, with freight getting first priority contractually. Though it also has…

From my understanding and someone editing Wikipedia, Amtrak has priority by law [1], thought the Amtrak page mentions a time window which the trains must hit to receive priority [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackage_rights 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Trains_and_tracks

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#45

Post by jbuzbee »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29
ubernostrum wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United has changed, and not in a way that would make this easier. Now they offer paid first-class and "premium economy" upgrades to passengers at or shortly before check-in, usually steeply discounted, and consensus from passengers with status seems to be that A) it's not offered to them and B) it's offered before status upgrades are applied, so if first class fills up from the cheap upgrades, there will not be any s…

Does United even offer first class on international flights though? I thought they only offered business class on international flights (first class on domestic flights, but so what?).

Yeah. United has both business and first on International flights. Having been in both, I'd say that there isn't a whole lot of difference though. But In both cases, I just love those lay-flat seats when doing a 14-hour flight between LA and Sydney...

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#46

Post by yew »

jmilkbal wrote: post #44
yew wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains didn't die as an industry. Actually the US has an exceedingly good (privately-owned) freight rail system, compared to the rest of the world (assuming you're talking about the US from the Amtrak reference). What did happen is that Amtrak was displaced by said freight rail system. It doesn't really own any rail - everything is under contract, with freight getting first priority contractually. Though it also has…

From my understanding and someone editing Wikipedia, Amtrak has priority by law [1], thought the Amtrak page mentions a time window which the trains must hit to receive priority [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackage_rights 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Trains_and_tracks

Not at my primary computer at the moment, so can't check this.

That's not the case as far as I'm aware - but I'm not an Amtrak expert. A citation (the Wikipedia article doesn't provide one) would be nice.

[EDIT]

Looking around, it seems that Amtrak does have preference under certain circumstances. Until around 2008-2009 the rules for enforcing that were very lax and the common case was that freight was given priority. See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04hallock.html and http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-2522531.html for example.

Some legal changes (including the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008) improved conditions, mostly by setting standard rules for allocating usage - but the language of the regulations is still very flexible. There are also some issues around the difficulty of one train passing another on single-tracked rail with limited sidings.

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#47

Post by mortenjorck »

omni wrote: post #37
georgemcbay wrote: post #31

The economics behind the failure of the Concorde are far more complicated than "people didn't buy enough tickets". There were an extremely limited amount of routes (basically you could fly out of NYC or Washington DC to either London or Paris), mostly due to the problem of sonic booms, but also because the plane design was such that there was essentially a minimum travel distance for it to ever be reasonably economic…

I can think of at least 113 other reasons as well. I'd imagine a fatal crash would have had much more impact on consumer attitudes towards the Concorde than it would towards other, more "conventional" plane models. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

It's strange. The Concorde crash was clearly due to a cascade of safety protocol violations, from Continental's runway debris and subsequent skipped runway inspection, to Air France's overweight takeoff, yet the Concorde itself, despite a spotless record, became the target of public outrage.

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#48

Post by robryan »

michaelt wrote: post #35
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed any big problems. The American airport I fly into often (SeaTac) is pretty efficient, security rarely takes more than 10 minutes. The other smaller airports I've experienced haven't been any worse.

Airports and airlines advise [1-4] arriving 2 to 3 hours before the departure of an international/long haul flight. If airlines and airports have the capability to get you through security quickly, they don't do a good job of publicizing it. [1] http://www.portseattle.org/sea-tac/passenger-services/pages/... [2] http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/orphan/faq/#2 [3] http://www.stanstedairport.com/stansted-airport-guide/che…

I think rather than state an average time to get through the airport and on the plane and have everything break down the second it gets congested they are going to recommend a timeframe that should get everyone on the plane even in the worst case.

Airports/ airlines want to get planes out on time, wasting moe of your time makes that easier for them.

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#49

Post by magic_haze »

delinka wrote: post #9
mindcrime wrote: post #6

I'm just waiting for the invention of the Star Trek "transporter" or the TARDIS.

Star Trek's transporters would be excellent. We could recover all that land that's covered in paving, no longer care about location, eliminate the pollution of today's internal combustion engines... The sad thing is that if this could happen in the next decade, I fear it would quickly become a target of the entire transportation industry as they scramble to lobby for laws to prevent its use. And the same thing would…

_If_ we manage to create transporters at all (never mind the next decade), the impact on religion and legislation would be far greater than on the transportation industry. If your body is destroyed and reconstructed, are you still the same person? What if you could make copies? It's just information, after all. And so on...

Do any of the Star Trek episodes investigate this aspect of the transporters?

Re: You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster

#50

Post by shadowfox »

michaelt wrote: post #35
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed any big problems. The American airport I fly into often (SeaTac) is pretty efficient, security rarely takes more than 10 minutes. The other smaller airports I've experienced haven't been any worse.

Airports and airlines advise [1-4] arriving 2 to 3 hours before the departure of an international/long haul flight. If airlines and airports have the capability to get you through security quickly, they don't do a good job of publicizing it. [1] http://www.portseattle.org/sea-tac/passenger-services/pages/... [2] http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/orphan/faq/#2 [3] http://www.stanstedairport.com/stansted-airport-guide/che…

They may also be pulling out a worst case bound - in case you get pulled over for a secondary inspection and that sort of thing.
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