24 ms·
Flying for Thanksgiving
- Jeremy1026 8y ago15 TB of data went through SFOs WiFi on Nov 26, 2017. To me that is the biggest takeaway. That is a lot of data, even for there being a ton of people flying through.
- nathanaldensr 8y agoThose iCloud accounts ain't gonna sync themselves!
- _asummers 8y agoAssuming a podcast is 50MB, that would be 300k podcasts. If I'm about to jump on a flight, I may download 4-5, which would put that at about 60k people. I just found an article saying 53 million people flew through SFO in 2016. If we distribute those evenly (unreasonable, but ballparks it), we get just under 145k passengers / day. Obviously web pages and mp3s are much lighter than a typical podcast, so this isn't the best methodology. 15TB is a lot, for sure, but on the busiest travel day of the year, I can rationalize it.
- pstrateman 8y agoWebpages are pretty huge now, cnn.com is ~2MiB
- praet 8y agoEasily double that even, if don't use cache (4.4mb on a mobile device, while testing just now).
- Rapzid 8y agoI see extremely few people listening to anything that's not in-flight entertainment on flights. I bet it's mostly kids watching youtube videos.
- chrisseaton 8y agoThat’s funny - I almost never see anyone using inflight entertainment screens any more. People are always watching Netflix or listening to something instead. And I think my view is supported by airlines starting to remove those screens because they’re not being used.
- ghaff 8y agoDepends on the airline and the plane. If anything, I would have said there was a trend toward in-flight on-demand programming at no charge. It's increasingly delivered over WiFi but, in my experience, there's usually a screen as well. Admittedly, my experience is mostly limited to United (trending toward on-demand) and JetBlue (just free DirectTV AFAIK).
- chrisseaton 8y ago> toward in-flight on-demand programming at no charge Huh? I've never ever seen a charge for inflight entertainment, and I fly United all the time. Maybe different routes, then.
- ghaff 8y agoUnited charges for DirectTV https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/travel/Pages/DIRECTV.aspx https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/travel/Pages/DIRECTV.aspx On the planes where there's on-demand programming (on your tablet or the seatback), that's free. I mostly bring my own and have never paid but I assume they're phasing out the paid option.
- totalrobe 8y agoDepends on the airline and the route. On long haul flights on Emirates, who's known for the inflight system, everybody is using it.
- analogmemory 8y agoPeople get offline versions of podcasts, albums from streaming services, netflix, etc
- extrapolate 8y agoThe graphs are cumulative, so the total is 8 TB (1TB on 5GHz and 7TB on 2.4GHz).
- nerdbaggy 8y agoThere was a Windows update that is dated for the 27th. But with timezones it could be the 26th. I’m not sure what timezone Microsoft realeases are in https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051033/windows-10-update-kb4051033 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051033/windows-10-...
- themagician 8y agoIt’s not that much when you consider the size of the airport and the amount of video people now watch between Netflix, YouTube and FaceTime. You can burn through 1GB and hour with ease, so that’s really only 15,000 video hours of you want to think about it that way. I’d guess on a normal day SFO hosts at least 100,000 people.
- khuey 8y agoSFO had 55.8 million passengers in 2017 so around 150k/day on average.
- deadprogram 8y agoOh man, how I love data! Good work on this post.
- Plastikdusche 8y agoVery cool approach indeed, but there's also this ;) https://www.flysfo.com/media/facts-statistics/air-traffic-statistics/2018 https://www.flysfo.com/media/facts-statistics/air-traffic-st...
- aaronbrager 8y agoThat data is only monthly
- AshleyGrant 8y agoFlying on Thanksgiving Day is a joy. I've done it twice now. The ATL concourses are practically empty. It is a bit strange to see the flight boards almost empty on a Thursday morning. I do bring $5 Starbucks gift cards for the entire crew of every flight I'm on to thank them for having to work on a day when most of the country is with family. It's not much, but it's something. The folks flying on holidays are low on the seniority list, so they're generally working that day because they have to, not because they want to.
- zorpner 8y agoI always try to fly on Thanksgiving/Christmas day (SFO->DCA this Thursday), and this is a great idea. Thank you!
- warent 8y agoThis is a great idea. I'm going to do the same when I fly out Thanksgiving as well. Thank you
- fabricexpert 8y agoThat's incredibly wholesome, the thought didn't even occur to me.
- scirocco 8y agoWouldn't you get paid extra for working on such a day?
- cperciva 8y agoDepends what the union negotiates. When they negotiate overtime pay for working on holidays, you typically end up with the lucrative holiday hours being staffed by the most senior employees. Basically, the junior people get screwed no matter what...
- sokoloff 8y agoAn almost universal union truth.
- kevindong 8y agoGrowing up, my Chinese family didn't really celebrate Christmas. Consequently, we would always travel for family vacations on Christmas day. Christmas day flights were generally slightly cheaper than non-Christmas day flights, which was nice. --- I also like how the writer asked for the daily number of unique users but got bandwidth usage instead.
- josephpmay 8y agoI once got a $5 flight from Fort Lauderdale to New York on Christmas Day
- lowpro 8y agoDo you remember how you found it?
- josephpmay 8y agoYea, a promotional email from Jet Blue
- js2 8y agoIf it wasn’t for your people, my people would starve on Christmas. https://www.npr.org/2017/12/25/573415894/why-do-jewish-people-eat-chinese-food-on-christmas https://www.npr.org/2017/12/25/573415894/why-do-jewish-peopl... :-)
- desdiv 8y agoBelieve it or not, this topic of "where do Jews eat on Christmas" actually came up in a light-hearted way during a Supreme Court nominee hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tku61sKhPGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tku61sKhPGo
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoI wouldn't believe it if you had told me before but thanks for sharing that tidbit! Having worked a few Christmas and Christmas Eve nights at Chinese restaurants in the past, I appreciated it.
- mnutt 8y agoGiven that Thanksgiving 2016's bandwidth is unremarkable, maybe Thanksgiving Sunday of 2017 had some sort of external factor, like weather-related flight delays? Though I didn't find any news specifically calling out flight delays, this was the closest and pretty vague: https://abcnews.go.com/US/sunshine-us-fog-flight-delays-west-coast/story?id=51388432 https://abcnews.go.com/US/sunshine-us-fog-flight-delays-west...
- mnw21cam 8y agoAgreed, just looking at a single year at a single airport could be showing some kind of external factor, like weather, operating system updates just released, etc. Would need to repeat for multiple airports and years to get a robust conclusion. Not that I think the conclusion is wrong - it just isn't robust.
- peteretep 8y agoI feel like Google flights would have given you the same data by showing that flying on the day of Thanksgiving is way cheaper. Just a guess, though.
- telesilla 8y agoCheaper doesn't always tell you "least busy", especially when planning ahead. I'll have the misery of flying the day before Christmas this year and the flight itself was peanuts but I'm not looking forward to the airport situation.
- goobynight 8y agoA lot more goes into flight pricing than the available space. They'll look at their data and sometimes hold out on high prices, hoping for someone to bite on 1 ticket they desperately need vs trying to sell 5 tickets at 25% of their current price. Source: friend works in pricing for a major airline
- gumby 8y agoThe weird thing to me about flying on Thanksgiving (I don't observe it) is how sorry the air staff is for me "of you have to miss out on fly on thanksgiving"). While they have to work on that day and apparently it matters to them! Since it matters to them I thank them for their concern. But it's really simply an easy day to travel if I have a reason to.
- jmspring 8y agoFriends and I, for years, used to go to Vegas for thanksgiving -- late 90s until mid 2000s. The change in travel patterns and when people flew was interesting. The reason for vegas - multiple people from different areas that mostly had direct flights to Vegas. These days, I tend to pick areas that are quiet and relatively easy to get to -- a lot of those have been exploring the Sierra or remote parts of the coast.
- Xcelerate 8y agoThis reminds me: I procrastinated and haven't booked my Christmas ticket yet... Bay Area to Atlanta — anyone got any tips? I think Google Flights is the best way to find the cheapest ticket, but if there's something else out there I'd be glad to know!
- mav3rick 8y agoIf you can, just stay longer and work remotely for a couple of days ? Google Flights tells you day-to-day flight prices.
- mellow-lake-day 8y agoWhen I was buying a ticket to Europe for study abroad I was checking these sites, in the end I used the first one, but all were helpful: * http://www.momondo.com/ http://www.momondo.com/ * https://www.kayak.com/flights https://www.kayak.com/flights * https://www.cheapoair.com/ https://www.cheapoair.com/ * https://www.google.com/flights/ https://www.google.com/flights/ ($$$) * https://www.hipmunk.com/ https://www.hipmunk.com/ ($$$) * http://kiwi.com/ http://kiwi.com/ * https://www.skyscanner.net/ https://www.skyscanner.net/ The ones with the dollars signs were the most expensive. These sites are not all equal some are more reputable than others, etc.
- potench 8y agoAnecdotally, use the brave browser to look for hotels and flights. Since it blocks tracking I’ve heard you will see lower cost flights (I’ve also heard the converse that searching with iPhone/safari may result in higher prices.) https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9gkcow/brave_browser_is_best_for_booking_flights/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9gkcow/brave_br...
- bigmattystyles 8y agoWhen I tried it with their built in TOR, many travel sites just refused to serve me a page.
- laken 8y agoThis is quite an ancient myth of flight pricing, and I'd love to see it die, but alas it will not. Your cookies and/or browser fingerprint has basically no effect on flight prices. In addition, the "proof" provided on that subreddit has quite a few problems: A) That route is priced ridiculously anyway, and they are looking at Delta, who always price ridiculously. Delta doesn't care about price-conscious shoppers, so they have virtually no incentive to try and segment fares based on browsing history, etc. B) They're looking at a third party flight aggregator. These are the WORST ways of buying flight tickets. They're decent for _finding_ deals, but 9/10 times, the airline's website sells it cheaper, and the airline's website gives you more benefits anyway (as you're the buyer and/or owner, not the online travel agent). C) Furthermore, these online travel agents cache flight lookups _very_ heavily. My guess is that the search with TOR routes to a different edge server with a different cache. API calls to the airlines are extremely costly. The best way of getting a cheaper flight has nothing to do with your browser, so don't worry about it. The best ways of saving money are based on _when_ you buy, and of course what airline. Don't buy on a weekend, and try not to fly on one either. Holidays are similar, except it's not a bad idea to actually fly ON a holiday, but not around one.
- lisper 8y agoNever attempted travel at Thankgiving, but for about 15 years running we would fly home on Christmas day after visiting family in Portland Oregon. We would leave in the evening, after a full day of festivities. The airport was like a ghost town. It was awesome.
- dawnerd 8y agoPdx is like a ghost town most days depending on the time. I think it’s what makes the airport so nice.
- coziestSoup 8y agoAnyone else struck by the promptness of the Dept. of Technology here? Always nice to see things just like this working.
- dandare 8y agoIt's 20 days in the UK. https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request/how-to-make-an-foi-request https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request/how...
- ankit219 8y agoI discovered this about three years back as well. India has quite a few holidays when you are required to travel to your home with two major festivals - Diwali(Oct/Nov) and Holi (March). Since, it is important for people to be at home for these festivals, they would book early, or take costly flights, or alternate flights. With my parents being flexible, and understanding about how I love them even when I am a day late to be at home, I ended up booking the flight on the festival day, rather than before. Cue and Behold. An empty airplane, with a total of 30-40 people in an Airbus 320. I got upgraded to business class for free. There were no lines for boarding. The plane took off on time, landed on time, and all of us could sleep in peace (or do whatever it is people do on planes). From that time, if I am going home for a festival, it will be the day of the festival.
- Domark 8y agoIt’s a shame you’ll miss the festival travelling! To each his/her own.
- ataturk 8y agoWhat you don't realize is that this is how most of the world was until it became horrifically overcrowded everywhere. Although admittedly, I have no idea when India wasn't overcrowded. In the States, every place has gotten to be a gridlocked mess nearly all the time and it is terrible. I drove to work today just to enjoy what should be "normal" traffic levels, not the 5mph, stop and go, everyone cutting you off, nightmare.
- billfruit 8y agoSry to be pedantic, and I do agree with your insight on travelling on Holidays. But I just want to say India is a pretty diverse country, so Holi/Diwali aren't necessarily the major holidays in many parts/sections of the country/population.
- ankit219 8y agoThat is true. And I am in no way generalizing my experience with whole of India. But, in my experience, I have seen less crowds on Holi and Diwali. And taking flight has not failed me till now.
- telesilla 8y agoI like to fly international on the afternoon of Christmas day - I get to have breakfast with my family then arrive in another continent to look forward to a stress-free New Years.
- Bahamut 8y agoI sort of discovered this myself when looking for flight prices about 4 months back around this week (flying from the US). I happen to have the whole week of Thanksgiving off from work due to it shutting down that week every year (supposedly not guaranteed but has been given every year since instituted), so I was looking to take advantage of it to travel - I settled on the UK, but picking good days/times to fly was a challenge. I knew that generally early morning/late night flights were cheaper if I could get them in general, but one thing I noticed was flights were expensive the Saturday before to fly out, and expensive the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving to fly back. I settled on flying out the Friday before Thanksgiving, and flying back on Black Friday for a savings of about $200-300. My flight to the UK though was completely full, in part owing that SFO is a major United hub whose employees take advantage of flying standby whenever they can. I’ll be a little surprised if it is full going back though.
- peteretep 8y agoI had the joy this year of flying across Europe on New Years Eve. NYE fireworks across Germany (I think it was Germany) were truly spectacular from the air.
- saifsadiq1995 8y agoso many numbers !!!!!
- rajman187 8y agoBegging the question has nothing to do with raising a question, it's a type of logical fallacy. And it's also annoying to see misused. /Pedantry
- LanceH 8y agoI could also just be a phrase which means just what it seems to mean. Maybe you could point me to the book of allowable phrases. If he used it to describe another logical fallacy, that would be wrong, but in this case it's just a couple words that make sense and also have some other meaning in some other context.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoThe words only make sense because he's likely heard it in the context of the logical fallacy. The words don't "make sense" without that. The couple of words that he'd be looking for would be "begging me to question" or "raises the question."
- Dylan16807 8y agoTry "begs for the question". Then remember that the word "for" is often omitted after the word "beg". "beg your pardon". "beg forgiveness". Taking the phrase as written, outside the idiom for a logical fallacy, the grammar is perfectly adequate.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rpm33 8y agoThanksgiving and Christmas - best days to fly. Especially if you are not seeing family either of those days.
- dandare 8y agoTIL about ghostscript's txtwrite function. A dawn of a new era!
- iammart 8y agoReally enjoyed reading this, thanks for the post!
- didgeoridoo 8y agoGreat post. Is there any resource out there to help non-technical journalists process poorly-formatted FOIA data dumps? (Either a how-to guide, or by directly helping out with ETL pro bono)?
- ForHackernews 8y ago> I don’t know the backstory of why most FOIA requests end up with data being formatted in the worst way possible It's malicious compliance. They're required to give you the info, but they aren't required to make your life easier.
- dwighttk 8y agoHanlon’s razor
- jhauris 8y agoI assumed they used PDF because it's a more stable format that is harder to accidentally modify on receipt. They may also need to store it on their end in case they need to prove what they provided, and provide some level of forgery prevention or detection.
- udayrddy 8y agoThat is a lot of effort and nice analysis, but concluding the story based on the WiFi data usage is a weak support because 1. Flights get often delayed most, during the long weekend days 2. Because it is a holiday season, people like me assume the security clearance line gets busier than the regular days and reach the airport 90 minutes earlier (45 minutes earlier on a non-holiday trip) 3. November it is, places might have covered with snow or fog (SFO might be an exemption) I think it would have been a great support to your analysis if the peak is measured on passenger count or unique devices connected to the wifi.
- lathiat 8y agoI planned a holiday to the USA last year with my wife. Intentionally planned our trip to Disneyland (1 of 3.5 weeks) to avoid school holidays etc. Accidentally planned to attend the week of thanksgiving. Fortunately realised before my flights were booked and changed it to the week after. Near miss :) apparently it’s one of the busiest weeks for Disneyland. And many families end up taking the entire week off not just thanksgiving? I had no idea and found that crazy but there you go :)
- ghaff 8y agoAlthough not universal, a lot of companies give the day after Thanksgiving off as well as Thanksgiving itself. (And, typically, not a lot gets done on at least the Wednesday afternoon as well.) So it's a pretty common week for families (and others) to take off.
- polpo 8y agoThe SSID for the WiFi at SFO is called “#SFO FREE WIFI”. It’s named as if someone has a wireless hotspot in their backpack running on a battery pack trying to steal the login information for your bank. I had the same reaction the first time I saw the WiFi SSID at SFO. “Surely that can’t actually be the name of the official WiFi here. Let’s let it keep looking for networks...”
- kiallmacinnes 8y agoI've seen lots of airports etc use this pattern. I've always assumed it's because # sorts before most everything else according to the ASCII code, so their SSID will show at the top of the list.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoI thought it was a case of hashtag-itis.
- sdenton4 8y agoNah, pretty sure I remember seeing that airport WiFi ssid at sfo long before hash tags were a thing...
- jrnichols 8y agoAs someone that is working in an airport on Thanksgiving, this is accurate. and SFO's free wifi ssid really is kind of creepy. i'm also amazed still at just how slow and awful a lot of AT&T wifi still is. They should be ashamed of how slow it is.