5 ms·

> UK to Australia in an hour. That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip. Couple of h

> UK to Australia in an hour. That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip. Couple of hours to get to the airport, arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance to account for the variance in check-in, security, and immigration times and to get through the overpriced mall itself, then anywhere between ten minutes and over an hour for immigration and customs depending on what flights arrive at the same time, then something like half an hour waiting for your luggage unless you’re very lucky, then again a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be. I’ve seen very few efforts to reduce any of this over the last two decades, and basically none as far as the things happening inside the airport are concerned. (Well, OK, automated immigration checks are a thing, but if you are one of a flight of people ineligible for them, fuck you, here are one or two border control officers that every one of you will be funnelled through.) So while I can appreciate the idea of less miserable long-haul flights, I don’t think “in an hour” is worth anything but a sad chuckle. And I haven’t even accounted for the time you’ll need to spend searching for prices and rearranging your schedule to work around the price discrimination machine. Air travel just sucks, and I don’t think neat aerospace engineering alone can get around that.

alvah 3y ago
I agree with the general point but "couple of hours to get to the airport" you must live a long long way from the airport if this is normal.
- manquer 3y ago
  With poor public transit as well perhaps . These days even if the airport is far off (newer airports usually are ) they are typically connected via public transit pretty well. Munich is a good example - airport is good 30+km from the city but there is fairly cheap and frequent train service.
  - usr1106 3y ago
    Munich's train connection is not really good. Nearly no long distance trains and a very long travel time to Munich main station where you need to change unless Munich is your final destination. So you lose over an hour, nearly 2 taking the notorious unreliability of German trains these days into account. Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.
    - manquer 3y ago
      For the most people destination is likely to be Munich , it is urban center with large population and density . People don’t think long distance trains when talking about commuting to airports, usual expectation of any urban airport is it well connected to the city center
      - usr1106 3y ago
        > People don't think long distance trains Have you been to Frankfurt airport long distance train station? It's pretty busy. That many airports have worse connections doesn't mean doing better would be unnecessary. I more or less regularly have to use Munich or Frankfurt airport and take a long distance train. Flying closer to to/from my destination in Germany would be possible in theory, but is not attractive, neither by price nor schedule options. So I have the choice between a horrible airport with a good train station and a more decent airport with time-wasting train connections.
MattGaiser 3y ago
Depends on where you are, but there are numerous attempts to reduce these things in Canada ,where I live, and the US has similar schemes. Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC, and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration. Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if you pay between $50 and $300. > Couple of hours to get to the airport You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse area for it to be that low". From North London, you should plan on more than 90 minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite. Gatwick is worse. Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going somewhere that flies from Stansted.
  - tomatocracy 3y ago
    If you really need to get there quicker, there are a few companies offering motorcycle taxi services (where they ride and you ride pillion), which can make a big difference at times of busy traffic (though it does limit the amount of luggage you can bring).
    - stephenr 3y ago
      Probably also increases the need for a change of underwear in the carry on bag you now can't take with you.
- llm_trw 3y ago
  The thing is that in the 90s it used to be 30 to 90 minutes for getting on board an international flight. Much like Concord we decided that slower is better for some reason.
twic 3y ago
Pan-Amdahl’s law?
Arch-TK 3y ago
My usual experience flying between the UK and Europe and in three cases China was that 2 hours has always been sufficient before departure and that 1 hour is about the limit after landing.
- Horffupolde 3y ago
  It’s not about the mode but the max.
  - KoftaBob 3y ago
    Why would it be about max? There are always going to be outliers in people's travel plans that make some aspect take longer than usual. If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of course be a ridiculous conclusion.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      It's really mode plus some standard deviation. Stuff can always happen. And sometimes the flight could just be canceled. If I expect it to be 90 minutes to get to the airport, I'm not going to assume it will take 4 hours because whatever even if if I'll miss one flight in my lifetime.
    - Horffupolde 3y ago
      Because not boarding the plane is much worse than waiting at the airport.
shiftpgdn 3y ago
I fly Texas to Florida pretty regularly for leisure with my kids. We all have clear/global entry. Our normal procedure is to pick 6-7AM flights with carryon only. This means leaving for the airport around 4 or 5. With a 2.5 hr flight that typically puts us out of the airport by 11 and generally starting our day by noon.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is the way to go - and you can reduce luggage even further by "preshipping" via UPS or whatever, or if you travel to the same area often store stuff with friends/relatives/small storage unit. The other huge advantage with picking the early flights - if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit closer and not be terribly worried. If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is bad news.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  That's an internal flight. Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.) Then add some more because the flight is much less regular and costs £1000 rather than £100, so missing it has a worse outcome.
simonbarker87 3y ago
UK to Australia would be a huge improvement and would mean I am significantly more likely to go there. I already happily fly 2-3 hours across Europe without it taking up an entire day of travel (30 minutes to the airport arrive 2 hours before, 2-3 on the plane and then 10 minutes from plane to taxi/train at the other end) vs the same + 20 hours of flying and likely a stop over.
hagbard_c 3y ago
> Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip. Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular public transport does not stop at the airport although there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is added to the normal public transport costs because that bus only starts from central station. Then there is the flight itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the privilege of taking more than a change of underwear. Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But... going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they seem to have problems with their security theatre show, somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place where I can take a train which brings me to the station from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time. The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21 hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present) delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German stations during the hours of night when everything is closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than the rule. In short things are not perfect but... Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half a day but it gains me the same in time to work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.
NamTaf 3y ago
In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular example. It'd reduce it to at most a day. You're right that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the 24 hours of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold. I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU. What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.
- ghaff 3y ago
  >as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold. Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's a big premium.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    If people really cared about it, there'd be long distance airlines that looked like submarine bunks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8 I'm not saying I'd not take it as an option ...
    - ghaff 3y ago
      There are more luxurious options out there but something like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit painful/boring however you slice it though. Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)
KoftaBob 3y ago
> Couple of hours to get to the airport Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the airport for the average traveler? That would only be the case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away from the nearest major airport. > arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance 3 hours is what's recommended for international flights, but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive. > a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be. Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple of hours to get from their destination airport to their final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to guess, the majority of travelers final destination is within an hour of the airport they land at. I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of air travel need to be made much more efficient, but inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.
- macbr 3y ago
  [dead]
Der_Einzige 3y ago
Sounds like you don't hold TSA precheck/global entry. You might want to fix that.
- stephenr 3y ago
  How exactly do you imagine TSA precheck will help on a flight between UK and Australia?

alvah 3y ago

I agree with the general point but "couple of hours to get to the airport" you must live a long long way from the airport if this is normal.

manquer 3y ago
With poor public transit as well perhaps . These days even if the airport is far off (newer airports usually are ) they are typically connected via public transit pretty well. Munich is a good example - airport is good 30+km from the city but there is fairly cheap and frequent train service.
- usr1106 3y ago
  Munich's train connection is not really good. Nearly no long distance trains and a very long travel time to Munich main station where you need to change unless Munich is your final destination. So you lose over an hour, nearly 2 taking the notorious unreliability of German trains these days into account. Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.
  - manquer 3y ago
    For the most people destination is likely to be Munich , it is urban center with large population and density . People don’t think long distance trains when talking about commuting to airports, usual expectation of any urban airport is it well connected to the city center
    - usr1106 3y ago
      > People don't think long distance trains Have you been to Frankfurt airport long distance train station? It's pretty busy. That many airports have worse connections doesn't mean doing better would be unnecessary. I more or less regularly have to use Munich or Frankfurt airport and take a long distance train. Flying closer to to/from my destination in Germany would be possible in theory, but is not attractive, neither by price nor schedule options. So I have the choice between a horrible airport with a good train station and a more decent airport with time-wasting train connections.

MattGaiser 3y ago

Depends on where you are, but there are numerous attempts to reduce these things in Canada ,where I live, and the US has similar schemes. Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC, and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration. Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if you pay between $50 and $300. > Couple of hours to get to the airport You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse area for it to be that low". From North London, you should plan on more than 90 minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite. Gatwick is worse. Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going somewhere that flies from Stansted.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  If you really need to get there quicker, there are a few companies offering motorcycle taxi services (where they ride and you ride pillion), which can make a big difference at times of busy traffic (though it does limit the amount of luggage you can bring).
  - stephenr 3y ago
    Probably also increases the need for a change of underwear in the carry on bag you now can't take with you.
llm_trw 3y ago
The thing is that in the 90s it used to be 30 to 90 minutes for getting on board an international flight. Much like Concord we decided that slower is better for some reason.

twic 3y ago

Pan-Amdahl’s law?

Arch-TK 3y ago

My usual experience flying between the UK and Europe and in three cases China was that 2 hours has always been sufficient before departure and that 1 hour is about the limit after landing.

Horffupolde 3y ago
It’s not about the mode but the max.
- KoftaBob 3y ago
  Why would it be about max? There are always going to be outliers in people's travel plans that make some aspect take longer than usual. If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of course be a ridiculous conclusion.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    It's really mode plus some standard deviation. Stuff can always happen. And sometimes the flight could just be canceled. If I expect it to be 90 minutes to get to the airport, I'm not going to assume it will take 4 hours because whatever even if if I'll miss one flight in my lifetime.
  - Horffupolde 3y ago
    Because not boarding the plane is much worse than waiting at the airport.

shiftpgdn 3y ago

I fly Texas to Florida pretty regularly for leisure with my kids. We all have clear/global entry. Our normal procedure is to pick 6-7AM flights with carryon only. This means leaving for the airport around 4 or 5. With a 2.5 hr flight that typically puts us out of the airport by 11 and generally starting our day by noon.

bombcar 3y ago
This is the way to go - and you can reduce luggage even further by "preshipping" via UPS or whatever, or if you travel to the same area often store stuff with friends/relatives/small storage unit. The other huge advantage with picking the early flights - if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit closer and not be terribly worried. If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is bad news.
Symbiote 3y ago
That's an internal flight. Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.) Then add some more because the flight is much less regular and costs £1000 rather than £100, so missing it has a worse outcome.

simonbarker87 3y ago

UK to Australia would be a huge improvement and would mean I am significantly more likely to go there. I already happily fly 2-3 hours across Europe without it taking up an entire day of travel (30 minutes to the airport arrive 2 hours before, 2-3 on the plane and then 10 minutes from plane to taxi/train at the other end) vs the same + 20 hours of flying and likely a stop over.

hagbard_c 3y ago

> Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip. Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular public transport does not stop at the airport although there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is added to the normal public transport costs because that bus only starts from central station. Then there is the flight itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the privilege of taking more than a change of underwear. Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But... going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they seem to have problems with their security theatre show, somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place where I can take a train which brings me to the station from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time. The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21 hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present) delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German stations during the hours of night when everything is closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than the rule. In short things are not perfect but... Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half a day but it gains me the same in time to work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.

NamTaf 3y ago

In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular example. It'd reduce it to at most a day. You're right that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the 24 hours of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold. I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU. What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.

ghaff 3y ago
>as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold. Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's a big premium.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If people really cared about it, there'd be long distance airlines that looked like submarine bunks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8 I'm not saying I'd not take it as an option ...
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There are more luxurious options out there but something like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit painful/boring however you slice it though. Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)

KoftaBob 3y ago

> Couple of hours to get to the airport Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the airport for the average traveler? That would only be the case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away from the nearest major airport. > arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance 3 hours is what's recommended for international flights, but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive. > a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be. Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple of hours to get from their destination airport to their final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to guess, the majority of travelers final destination is within an hour of the airport they land at. I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of air travel need to be made much more efficient, but inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.

macbr 3y ago
[dead]

Der_Einzige 3y ago

Sounds like you don't hold TSA precheck/global entry. You might want to fix that.

stephenr 3y ago
How exactly do you imagine TSA precheck will help on a flight between UK and Australia?