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>That would mean you don't need space for restaurants Restaurants existed in airports long before 9/11. People arrive early because missing flights costs you h
by hueving 10y ago
>That would mean you don't need space for restaurants
Restaurants existed in airports long before 9/11. People arrive early because missing flights costs you hundreds of dollars. Security adds maybe 20 mins to the process.
- rwmj 10y agoThat just means that people should be able to turn up and get on any flight without pre-booking. I'm going to guess that pre-booking is some sort of way to maximize revenue or minimize wasted empty seats.
- hueving 10y agoDefinitely minimizing wasted empty seats. Additionally, by encouraging people to book far enough ahead, they can change equipment to match the demand or add another flight to that day. It also allows them to price discriminate against business travelers who tend to have deeper pockets (flights expensed to their company) and tend to make lots of last minute travel changes (need another day to close a deal, etc). Losing the ability to ramp up the price on these types of travelers would mean higher fares for everyone and likely fewer ticket sales.
- closeparen 10y agoThere's already a frustrating degree of uncertainty as to when (if ever) showing up at the airport will actually yield a seat towards your destination. Adding the uncertainty of other people's demand and even more highly variable waits in line sounds like hell. I'd much rather cope with the Christmas rush by booking months early than by waiting at the airport for days.
- rwmj 10y agoI can at least imagine a system where (a) planes aren't assigned to destinations until the last minute and (b) more planes are made available at the obvious times of the year (holidays and so on). That might yield a very flexible turn-up-and-go system. However I've never run an airport so I can also imagine that there are important factors that I don't even know about that make this unworkable.
- ubernostrum 10y agoThis was how the original Eastern Air shuttle service worked. They ran flights between Washington, DC, Boston, and New York, scheduled to depart every hour on the hour. No reservations, just show up and walk onto the plane and you could pay the fare (roughly $12 in early-1960s dollars) on board. And if the hourly plane filled up and more people were still waiting to board, they'd roll out another plane. The hourly flights still exist (now run by American, which inherited the service from US Airways in the merger, which bought the service from Donald Trump's creditors after he defaulted on the loans he used to buy the service from Eastern when Eastern got into financial trouble), though of course now you have to buy a ticket before you go through security.
- wccrawford 10y agoExcept where it adds a lot more. It's about 45 minutes at our airport, as we've found out a few times. Plus, they ask you to be even earlier than that just in case it might take longer, so you're stuck there for 45+ minutes after security.
- BurningFrog 10y agoIt's also for the same reason movies start 12 minutes after the announced time: Some people are always a bit late.
- hueving 10y agoOuch that is awful. Sounds like ORD, that's the only airport I've been to that consistently sucked in TSA lines.
- monksy 10y agoThey've gotten a lot better since December.
- komali2 10y agoAlso, layovers.