4 ms·

I've missed a flight once. From Europe to home Cost me $4K to get another. If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done.

lelanthran 5y ago
> I've missed a flight once. From Europe to home Cost me $4K to get another. > > If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done. Well, he might be balancing it against the time saved, no? Over 20 flights, missing one is a $4k cost, but being early for 20 flights is also a cost. Assuming you're 30m early for each flight, you "lose" 10 hours by being early. Comes down to personal trade-offs too (maybe missing a flight means you miss christmas with the family, in which case the $4k is irrelevant anyway). My personal method is, the more important the journey, the more safety margin I assign it in terms of time. Going on a 60m flight for in-office days to a destination with frequent flights throughout the day? If I miss it then no problem, I'll take the one 30m later. Going to a destination with two flights per day, and it's for a court appearance? Cannot miss it unless i want a warrant of arrest issued against me. You can be late for some things with small consequences as a result. Being late for other things might be a life-changing moment.
- totetsu 5y ago
  But it's not like many people are in a position to turn those scraps of time between 6am and 7am in the morning they could save from heading to the airport later, into a fraction of $4K or even valuable personal time. Usually when I fly internationally, It is a whole day event that I already have taken leave for.
- theaeolist 5y ago
  10 hrs waiting (i.e. catching up on email and social media, eating or shopping) for 4k? Does this seem reasonable to you?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Probably not in that case. My flights cost around ~100e though so spending even 1 hour extra to reduce my risk of missing it by 5% is already not worth it.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  I guess it depends on which flights you're missing - if it's a 1 hour flight that can be replaced with a 5 hour train ride (e.g., Munich to Berlin), then, after you take into consideration check in times, boarding times, waiting for your goddamn luggage at Tegel (glad to see they finally opened their new airport, they can remove that new future tense[0] they added to German just for explaining when the new one would open) then missing the flight isn't so bad. But as I'm out of APAC and was working for people in EU, all my flights were very bad ones to miss, as in, the next available flight will be tomorrow, if you're lucky. For my $4K example, I missed an Emirates flight (due to a calendar fuck up, entirely my fault, got timezone differences wrong) that ended up in my home city via Sydney, usually took about 19 - 21 hours, depending on delays in Dubai and Sydney. The cheapest next available was an Etihad flight that involved a very long layover in their very badly designed airport in Abu Dhabi - there's bugger all space to sit and wait, so people just sit along the halls leading to terminals, but worst of all, it's shaped like a giant hamburger, and so are the terminals, and the dome ceilings amplify noise amazingly, at one point I thought people were going to lynch the parents of a 4 year old who wouldn't stop screaming, just because the terminal's design amplified the screams so damn much. And then it was followed by a long layover in Brisbane (I think? I was somewhat in a fugue state by then, all I wanted was a shower, and I had no towel, Australian airports provide showers, but not towels, unlike Changi or München Airport do), so by the time I got home, it had been 36 hours since leaving Munich. So, anyway, long rant done, I can conclude two things: 1) Umesh is privileged to have enough wealth or earnings that rebooking a flight isn't a significant cost for him, unlike the majority of air travellers, and 2) Umesh isn't flying half way around the world. I'm not big on taking life advice from people who are more privileged than the general population, because well, life advice implicitly predicated on privilege isn't really applicable to the general population. [0]: https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii-eingefuhrt-um.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-ii...
smcl 5y ago
Yeah this one in particular is a symptom of some well-paid guys dividing their salary by hours-worked to determine how much their time is "worth" and applying that where really it shouldn't (like Matt Yglesias: https://twitter.com/sarahkogod/status/1346868669947768832?lang=en https://twitter.com/sarahkogod/status/1346868669947768832?la...). Why did he stop at flights though, surely there are other things you do more frequently you can save time (and therefore money) on? Why did he not say "If you’ve never shit yourself, you’re spending too much time walking to the toilet"
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Sadly Matt Yglesias deleted his tweet she was replying too, would have loved to have read it. And you're spot on, why isn't there a Umeshism for "if you haven't shat in a bush..."
  - smcl 5y ago
    I was sure this would get downvoted, there's quite a few prudish types here who do not enjoy hypotheticals around where you might be shitting :D
samatman 5y ago
My turn! I missed a flight once. Cost me two hours to get on the next connecting flight. Professors tend to fly the way I was flying, between major cities and frequently. Miss a flight, fine, but that extra 45 minutes of sleeping every business trip can't be made up at the gate, and they really add up.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Do professors pay their own flights? Or do employers cover them? And how pissed would their employers be at paying for the same flight twice?

lelanthran 5y ago

> I've missed a flight once. From Europe to home Cost me $4K to get another. > > If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done. Well, he might be balancing it against the time saved, no? Over 20 flights, missing one is a $4k cost, but being early for 20 flights is also a cost. Assuming you're 30m early for each flight, you "lose" 10 hours by being early. Comes down to personal trade-offs too (maybe missing a flight means you miss christmas with the family, in which case the $4k is irrelevant anyway). My personal method is, the more important the journey, the more safety margin I assign it in terms of time. Going on a 60m flight for in-office days to a destination with frequent flights throughout the day? If I miss it then no problem, I'll take the one 30m later. Going to a destination with two flights per day, and it's for a court appearance? Cannot miss it unless i want a warrant of arrest issued against me. You can be late for some things with small consequences as a result. Being late for other things might be a life-changing moment.

totetsu 5y ago
But it's not like many people are in a position to turn those scraps of time between 6am and 7am in the morning they could save from heading to the airport later, into a fraction of $4K or even valuable personal time. Usually when I fly internationally, It is a whole day event that I already have taken leave for.
theaeolist 5y ago
10 hrs waiting (i.e. catching up on email and social media, eating or shopping) for 4k? Does this seem reasonable to you?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Probably not in that case. My flights cost around ~100e though so spending even 1 hour extra to reduce my risk of missing it by 5% is already not worth it.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
I guess it depends on which flights you're missing - if it's a 1 hour flight that can be replaced with a 5 hour train ride (e.g., Munich to Berlin), then, after you take into consideration check in times, boarding times, waiting for your goddamn luggage at Tegel (glad to see they finally opened their new airport, they can remove that new future tense[0] they added to German just for explaining when the new one would open) then missing the flight isn't so bad. But as I'm out of APAC and was working for people in EU, all my flights were very bad ones to miss, as in, the next available flight will be tomorrow, if you're lucky. For my $4K example, I missed an Emirates flight (due to a calendar fuck up, entirely my fault, got timezone differences wrong) that ended up in my home city via Sydney, usually took about 19 - 21 hours, depending on delays in Dubai and Sydney. The cheapest next available was an Etihad flight that involved a very long layover in their very badly designed airport in Abu Dhabi - there's bugger all space to sit and wait, so people just sit along the halls leading to terminals, but worst of all, it's shaped like a giant hamburger, and so are the terminals, and the dome ceilings amplify noise amazingly, at one point I thought people were going to lynch the parents of a 4 year old who wouldn't stop screaming, just because the terminal's design amplified the screams so damn much. And then it was followed by a long layover in Brisbane (I think? I was somewhat in a fugue state by then, all I wanted was a shower, and I had no towel, Australian airports provide showers, but not towels, unlike Changi or München Airport do), so by the time I got home, it had been 36 hours since leaving Munich. So, anyway, long rant done, I can conclude two things: 1) Umesh is privileged to have enough wealth or earnings that rebooking a flight isn't a significant cost for him, unlike the majority of air travellers, and 2) Umesh isn't flying half way around the world. I'm not big on taking life advice from people who are more privileged than the general population, because well, life advice implicitly predicated on privilege isn't really applicable to the general population. [0]: https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii-eingefuhrt-um.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-ii...

smcl 5y ago

Yeah this one in particular is a symptom of some well-paid guys dividing their salary by hours-worked to determine how much their time is "worth" and applying that where really it shouldn't (like Matt Yglesias: https://twitter.com/sarahkogod/status/1346868669947768832?lang=en https://twitter.com/sarahkogod/status/1346868669947768832?la...). Why did he stop at flights though, surely there are other things you do more frequently you can save time (and therefore money) on? Why did he not say "If you’ve never shit yourself, you’re spending too much time walking to the toilet"

EdwardDiego 5y ago
Sadly Matt Yglesias deleted his tweet she was replying too, would have loved to have read it. And you're spot on, why isn't there a Umeshism for "if you haven't shat in a bush..."
- smcl 5y ago
  I was sure this would get downvoted, there's quite a few prudish types here who do not enjoy hypotheticals around where you might be shitting :D

samatman 5y ago

My turn! I missed a flight once. Cost me two hours to get on the next connecting flight. Professors tend to fly the way I was flying, between major cities and frequently. Miss a flight, fine, but that extra 45 minutes of sleeping every business trip can't be made up at the gate, and they really add up.

EdwardDiego 5y ago
Do professors pay their own flights? Or do employers cover them? And how pissed would their employers be at paying for the same flight twice?