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If everyone comes a minute before departure, all lose the flight, whereas if everyone comes 24 hours earlier, none will miss the flight, so there is obviously a
by harperlee 11y ago
If everyone comes a minute before departure, all lose the flight, whereas if everyone comes 24 hours earlier, none will miss the flight, so there is obviously a change. Plus you get people to sit in a huge store without any means to leave. So the airport doesn't have a throughput problem! They don't have a problem at all, as there is also no clear alternative - normally there is only 1 airport to choose from. So people need to take whatever service quality said airport offers.
EDIT: It would be good both for this conversation and HN in general if the downvotes were explained. The parent states several things that in my opinion are not completely true (such as all people arriving earlier don't having effect on anything, or the need to have absolutely no queues at some times for throughput to be improved, or that that never happens) and pointing some things out doesn't seem to me like a punishable action, but if it is, some explanation would be good.
In particular, my experience with for example the Frankfurt airport is that you get lots of security lines but more than half are closed, with up to 8 employees per line. They require that no one starts unpacking and preparing things until the area is cleared. They request a chemicals test if the metal detector jumps on you (?). They do random things like what vincefutr23 points out in another comment:
> still having to take belts and shoes off even with a full body scan
The effect of all this is that you get more "latency" than "throughput" problems, as each particular line clogs a lot, and you could open more lines if you wished, and it takes you a lot of time to be serviced even with few people.
But then again: it only is the problem of the airport if they are affected by it - but they don't seem very keen on improving it.
- raldi 11y agoThe airport can't hold that many people.
- tgb 11y agoThe number of people in the security line is dependent only upon the rate at which they are processed and the total number arriving for their flights, doesn't depend upon how early people get there. And once people get through the lines, there's no change from before so there'd be no large increase in how many people are in the waiting areas. (Except for the increase in uncertainty in how long the lines will take, that will cause some extra people in the waiting areas. I see no reason to expect this to be a large enough effect to be problematic.)
- raldi 11y agoI'm not contesting that; I'm just pointing out a separate reason it wouldn't work.
- tgb 11y agoSorry, I don't understand. I'm contesting your claim that airports would have to hold more people than they currently are if people showed up earlier to account for the longer lines.
- raldi 11y agoLet's say everyone shows up to the airport 3 hours before their flights. At 9:00 on Monday, the airport holds all people with flights departing between 9:01 and 12:00 -- 3 hours' worth of people. Now you change that, asking people to show up 24 hours before their flights. At 9:00 on Monday, the airport holds all people with flights departing between 9:01 Monday and 9:00 Tuesday -- 24 hours' worth of people, eight times as much. Airports can't hold 8x as many people without being in violation of the fire code.
- tgb 11y agoYour numbers are exaggerated to make a point, but I think it actually changes things. My claim is that the airports are already holding the extra people, compared to before the wait time increase. They're waiting in line to get through the TSA checkpoint. Getting there early enough to make your flight doesn't change this: you still spend the same amount of time in the line, then go to your gate and board your flight. Unless everyone is abandoning the line and going home since they're going to miss their flight (unlikely).
- jowiar 11y agoWell, the effect is that the airport needs to open earlier in the AM, so anecdotally it just shifts the entire dance an hour earlier. The problem with saying "everyone come 2 hours early", is that now, if you show up 1 hour early, you have traffic from later flights. Anecdotally, when I've flown on evening flights recently, the security line is 2 minutes long (because nobody is showing up early), whereas the 6am line takes an eternity.
- tgb 11y agoShifting it earlier is the point, since the plane will leave on time regardless of when the people get there.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]