7 ms·

Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.

by ISL 4y ago

zionic 4y ago
Also sanity. I’ve done a 16 hour flight before, and let me say never again. I slept for half of it and the other half was still miserable.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I don't think I could sleep for 8 hours on a plane
  - rhino369 4y ago
    The business class lay flat seats are pretty comfortable. I was able to sleep 8-9 hours on them, but was interrupted sleep. Better than nothing.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Yeah, those take at least an additional day to recover from.
- MetallicCloud 4y ago
  I live in Colorado, but am from Melbourne, Australia. I told everyone the last time I went back that it will be the last visit. That trip is hellish and once every 2 years is still too much.
  - chx 4y ago
    Try adding a break in Honolulu. It is indeed a long flight from Los Angeles but I found it's bearable if you spend a few days in Honolulu. Also, Jetstar-Melbourne can be very cheap in economy or it can be a very good price/value in what it calls business which really is just premium economy in today's transcontinental flights.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      Before the pandemic saved me from ever having to do it again, I was traveling from Portland to Hyderabad twice a year, and I told my manager that I wouldn't go back unless I could stop over in London for a day before continuing on to Hyderabad. Never did find out if that would have been accepted or not, but I was so tired of that particular three-flight nightmare.
  - njarboe 4y ago
    Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in the future.
    - upwardbound 4y ago
      I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for spacecraft.
      - jessaustin 4y ago
        I didn't downvote, but it seems unlikely that either of GP's endpoints will ever boast spaceports.
        njarboe 4y ago
        Melbourne is on the coast so an offshore platform will work on that endpoint. New Mexico has a spaceport already. Baring one opening up near Denver, flying to the west coast and then taking a Starship would be possible.
        jessaustin 4y ago
        I'll take your word for it with respect to Melbourne, which is a lovely city I thoroughly enjoyed several decades ago. "Spaceport America" is a silly boondoggle that will never launch an orbital flight and will eventually be absorbed into White Sands missile range. Getting from anywhere in Colorado to any populated location not in Colorado takes longer than an hour. b^)
- bluGill 4y ago
  I find planes impossible to sleep on. End up arriving over tired and stiff and sore after my 16 hour flight. I've never got my company to spring for a better class though. Next time I'm taking a 1 day layover in Germany or something.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    That moment when your body really understands that it is in fact 1 or 2 in the morning, but you can't sleep on a plane. I'd nod off repeatedly, only to instantly wake back up again. I'm quite jealous of people who can just conk out on a plane, but it does not work for me.
- matwood 4y ago
  On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+ hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so many hours left to go. It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > On those lengths you start to go a little crazy 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really long international flight. I still remember the first time I flew home from the north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that silly map more than I should have (it just makes things slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few minutes I could have cried.
    - Fomite 4y ago
      The Seattle to Dubai flight is rough, but at least it's usually on a nice plane. The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all that long a flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.
    - matwood 4y ago
      > order seems to break down a bit Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks - just anything to pass the time.
- moomin 4y ago
  Try doing 24 hours, with a 9 month old. It was not fun.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    I actually did 30 with a 2 year and a 2 month old. The young one is easy actually, they are in a bassinet and sleep most of the way. The 2 year old was much more a problem. She was just under 2, so didn't have her own seat, was obviously getting bored and her sleep rhythm was completely different to mine. Still was OK though.
cjrp 4y ago
It's true, and makes sense where your face-to-face time is the key thing. But where it's just "work time", surely you can do a good amount of work on a 7 hour flight in a decent business class seat with reliable internet? Especially if you can also minimise the time wasted on the ground (fast security line, lounge with areas to work, airline calling your flight when it's almost finished boarding not at the start, etc.).
- rtpg 4y ago
  There are definitely people who can get work done in a flight, but honestly I have a hard time imagining logging 7 hours. Maybe if you have a lot of reading to do?
  - cjrp 4y ago
    I'm the same, but I'm imagining the "super serious business people" who are presumably the target market for these planes (given the price). Is it worth the premium to get them from London to NYC in 4 hours, when they could do 5 hours of billable work in the lounge/on the plane anyway.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Depends on how well you can sleep I guess. US to Europe is almost entirely overnight flights. Not so much the other way though.
  - afavour 4y ago
    I do too, but I also don't have a huge amount of experience sitting in an incredibly comfortable first class seat. I imagine I'd get a lot more done than I do in coach. I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
    - everforward 4y ago
      I fly first class a fair bit, and I struggle to get anything done on the plane (in the terminal is fine, though). For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going to be on a screen. It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable, first class is just kind of neutral; not actively comfortable or uncomfortable. I usually get more done sitting in the terminal than I do on the plane itself.
ksec 4y ago
Makes me wonder if BOOM will ever enter the private jet market.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Maybe that will be their go-to market once they realize tgat airline business is actually incredibly hard.
mshook 4y ago
Still, flying westbound fast makes tons of sense as you can arrive "before" you took off (local time) and thus you get a whole day in front of you. But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and flying during the day, you'll land at night...
- FredPret 4y ago
  It always makes a lot of sense - time saved is time saved. Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in bed on time.
  - theYipster 4y ago
    No it doesn't. You are forgetting timezones. The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only be used at speed over the ocean. A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time zone change. It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge forth with the day. My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      If I’m a jetlagged businessman in NYC, operating on internal London time, and I’m finishing my work day at 6PM local time/11PM internal time, I want to get home and wake up with my family ASAP rather than try and sleep on a plane. Thank goodness for Zoom
    - dfadsadsf 4y ago
      As somebody who flew quite a few lie-flat business flights on JFK->LON - you absolutely do not get good night sleep. Flight time is 7:30 and you can realistically go to sleep 30 minutes after take off (when they start serving food and other passengers are still noisy - good luck falling asleep quickly) and you are generally woken up about 1-1.5 hour before landing (Why? I have no idea but they turn on the lights, serve breakfast and do announcements about weather in London about that time before landing). So you get at most 5.5h of mediocre quality sleep which is better than nothing but not enough to function 100%. 3 hour flight will change a lot of things for JFK-LON business trips as they open up opportunities to loose only 1 full day during business trip instead of loosing two full days. I generally stay on NYC time with meetings in the afternoon LON time if trip is less than 5 days so short flight is game changer.
cannaceo 4y ago
As someone who flies first class there is no way I'm flying coach to save time. Flying business is about the lounges, the meals, the service, and the ability to stretch out your legs.
- moomin 4y ago
  As someone who flies coach everywhere, I’d do the same if I had the means to do so. A long flight in coach is extremely draining even if you’re time-focussed, you’ve got to take recovery time into consideration.
- MaxikCZ 4y ago
  If you value that over speed, why not take a oceanic cruiser? More lounges, more service, you can stretch your legs way more (or take a swim), better meals (and more of them).. Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK and the US east coast.
    - indecisive_user 4y ago
      There's only one left because there is no demand for that kind of travel, which is good evidence that people value time over comfort.
      - maxwell 4y ago
        There's certainly demand for low-cost ocean voyages as vacations, with over 300 cruise ships in service (and cruise lines generally quite profitable). It's high-cost, non-vacation, long distance travel/transport where ocean liners were beaten in the 1960s by airliners (and airlines, in contrast, are generally not very profitable).
      - 4y ago
ghaff 4y ago
That's true mostly of "rich people" who are also highly scheduled executives. Otherwise there are a lot of tradeoffs involving comfort, time, schedule, and so forth.
akmarinov 4y ago
If that was the case, wouldn’t we still have Concorde or something similar?

Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.

by ISL 4y ago

Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.

zionic 4y ago

Also sanity. I’ve done a 16 hour flight before, and let me say never again. I slept for half of it and the other half was still miserable.

missedthecue 4y ago
I don't think I could sleep for 8 hours on a plane
- rhino369 4y ago
  The business class lay flat seats are pretty comfortable. I was able to sleep 8-9 hours on them, but was interrupted sleep. Better than nothing.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Yeah, those take at least an additional day to recover from.
MetallicCloud 4y ago
I live in Colorado, but am from Melbourne, Australia. I told everyone the last time I went back that it will be the last visit. That trip is hellish and once every 2 years is still too much.
- chx 4y ago
  Try adding a break in Honolulu. It is indeed a long flight from Los Angeles but I found it's bearable if you spend a few days in Honolulu. Also, Jetstar-Melbourne can be very cheap in economy or it can be a very good price/value in what it calls business which really is just premium economy in today's transcontinental flights.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Before the pandemic saved me from ever having to do it again, I was traveling from Portland to Hyderabad twice a year, and I told my manager that I wouldn't go back unless I could stop over in London for a day before continuing on to Hyderabad. Never did find out if that would have been accepted or not, but I was so tired of that particular three-flight nightmare.
- njarboe 4y ago
  Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in the future.
  - upwardbound 4y ago
    I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for spacecraft.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      I didn't downvote, but it seems unlikely that either of GP's endpoints will ever boast spaceports.
      - njarboe 4y ago
        Melbourne is on the coast so an offshore platform will work on that endpoint. New Mexico has a spaceport already. Baring one opening up near Denver, flying to the west coast and then taking a Starship would be possible.
        jessaustin 4y ago
        I'll take your word for it with respect to Melbourne, which is a lovely city I thoroughly enjoyed several decades ago. "Spaceport America" is a silly boondoggle that will never launch an orbital flight and will eventually be absorbed into White Sands missile range. Getting from anywhere in Colorado to any populated location not in Colorado takes longer than an hour. b^)
bluGill 4y ago
I find planes impossible to sleep on. End up arriving over tired and stiff and sore after my 16 hour flight. I've never got my company to spring for a better class though. Next time I'm taking a 1 day layover in Germany or something.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  That moment when your body really understands that it is in fact 1 or 2 in the morning, but you can't sleep on a plane. I'd nod off repeatedly, only to instantly wake back up again. I'm quite jealous of people who can just conk out on a plane, but it does not work for me.
matwood 4y ago
On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+ hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so many hours left to go. It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > On those lengths you start to go a little crazy 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really long international flight. I still remember the first time I flew home from the north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that silly map more than I should have (it just makes things slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few minutes I could have cried.
  - Fomite 4y ago
    The Seattle to Dubai flight is rough, but at least it's usually on a nice plane. The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all that long a flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.
  - matwood 4y ago
    > order seems to break down a bit Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks - just anything to pass the time.
moomin 4y ago
Try doing 24 hours, with a 9 month old. It was not fun.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I actually did 30 with a 2 year and a 2 month old. The young one is easy actually, they are in a bassinet and sleep most of the way. The 2 year old was much more a problem. She was just under 2, so didn't have her own seat, was obviously getting bored and her sleep rhythm was completely different to mine. Still was OK though.

cjrp 4y ago

It's true, and makes sense where your face-to-face time is the key thing. But where it's just "work time", surely you can do a good amount of work on a 7 hour flight in a decent business class seat with reliable internet? Especially if you can also minimise the time wasted on the ground (fast security line, lounge with areas to work, airline calling your flight when it's almost finished boarding not at the start, etc.).

rtpg 4y ago
There are definitely people who can get work done in a flight, but honestly I have a hard time imagining logging 7 hours. Maybe if you have a lot of reading to do?
- cjrp 4y ago
  I'm the same, but I'm imagining the "super serious business people" who are presumably the target market for these planes (given the price). Is it worth the premium to get them from London to NYC in 4 hours, when they could do 5 hours of billable work in the lounge/on the plane anyway.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Depends on how well you can sleep I guess. US to Europe is almost entirely overnight flights. Not so much the other way though.
- afavour 4y ago
  I do too, but I also don't have a huge amount of experience sitting in an incredibly comfortable first class seat. I imagine I'd get a lot more done than I do in coach. I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
  - everforward 4y ago
    I fly first class a fair bit, and I struggle to get anything done on the plane (in the terminal is fine, though). For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going to be on a screen. It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable, first class is just kind of neutral; not actively comfortable or uncomfortable. I usually get more done sitting in the terminal than I do on the plane itself.

ksec 4y ago

Makes me wonder if BOOM will ever enter the private jet market.

hef19898 4y ago
Maybe that will be their go-to market once they realize tgat airline business is actually incredibly hard.

mshook 4y ago

Still, flying westbound fast makes tons of sense as you can arrive "before" you took off (local time) and thus you get a whole day in front of you. But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and flying during the day, you'll land at night...

FredPret 4y ago
It always makes a lot of sense - time saved is time saved. Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in bed on time.
- theYipster 4y ago
  No it doesn't. You are forgetting timezones. The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only be used at speed over the ocean. A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time zone change. It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge forth with the day. My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    If I’m a jetlagged businessman in NYC, operating on internal London time, and I’m finishing my work day at 6PM local time/11PM internal time, I want to get home and wake up with my family ASAP rather than try and sleep on a plane. Thank goodness for Zoom
  - dfadsadsf 4y ago
    As somebody who flew quite a few lie-flat business flights on JFK->LON - you absolutely do not get good night sleep. Flight time is 7:30 and you can realistically go to sleep 30 minutes after take off (when they start serving food and other passengers are still noisy - good luck falling asleep quickly) and you are generally woken up about 1-1.5 hour before landing (Why? I have no idea but they turn on the lights, serve breakfast and do announcements about weather in London about that time before landing). So you get at most 5.5h of mediocre quality sleep which is better than nothing but not enough to function 100%. 3 hour flight will change a lot of things for JFK-LON business trips as they open up opportunities to loose only 1 full day during business trip instead of loosing two full days. I generally stay on NYC time with meetings in the afternoon LON time if trip is less than 5 days so short flight is game changer.

cannaceo 4y ago

As someone who flies first class there is no way I'm flying coach to save time. Flying business is about the lounges, the meals, the service, and the ability to stretch out your legs.

moomin 4y ago
As someone who flies coach everywhere, I’d do the same if I had the means to do so. A long flight in coach is extremely draining even if you’re time-focussed, you’ve got to take recovery time into consideration.
MaxikCZ 4y ago
If you value that over speed, why not take a oceanic cruiser? More lounges, more service, you can stretch your legs way more (or take a swim), better meals (and more of them).. Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK and the US east coast.
  - indecisive_user 4y ago
    There's only one left because there is no demand for that kind of travel, which is good evidence that people value time over comfort.
    - maxwell 4y ago
      There's certainly demand for low-cost ocean voyages as vacations, with over 300 cruise ships in service (and cruise lines generally quite profitable). It's high-cost, non-vacation, long distance travel/transport where ocean liners were beaten in the 1960s by airliners (and airlines, in contrast, are generally not very profitable).
    - 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

That's true mostly of "rich people" who are also highly scheduled executives. Otherwise there are a lot of tradeoffs involving comfort, time, schedule, and so forth.

akmarinov 4y ago

If that was the case, wouldn’t we still have Concorde or something similar?