6 ms·

You can't remove the part where you have to travel to an airport, generally out of town. Security also seems to be variable enough that you need to add buffer,

You can't remove the part where you have to travel to an airport, generally out of town. Security also seems to be variable enough that you need to add buffer, and then there's the built in incentive to have people sitting around in a shopping mall.

throwway120385 2y ago
A shopping mall which you can't leave and in which you aren't allowed to bring your own drinks with few exceptions.
- cwmma 2y ago
  can bring a quart zip lock bag stuffed to brim with nips (50ml bottles of booze) through TSA security. While you are technically not allowed to drink them on the plane absolutely nobody gives a shit as long as you are not an idiot about it.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    And you can also bring an empty water bottle that there are often stations setup for the purpose of filling next to water fountains. Mind you, I'm annoyed at the liquids thing given I used to routinely bring bottles of wine or a local liqueur home in carry-on. And I can't any longer.
    - cycomanic 2y ago
      I recall when those guys in the UK (?) had their plan to explode a plane by mixing some volatile chemicals in the plane toilet. IIRC this kicked off the whole no liquids requirements. At the time I remember reading an article by a chemist on the chances of actually pulling off what they wee planning to do, and it was comical. To not just make a giant poof that mainly singed off some hair they needed to carefully mix the liquids in an ice bath for about 1h (without anyone noticing) and every little shake could potentially mess up the whole thing. He then went on to what he considered dangerous and mentioned a couple of powders which you can easily bring on board which are much more devastating.
      - throwway120385 2y ago
        I think the point of it was that our enemies had figured out that the way to destroy America wasn't to kill our leaders, but rather to convince us that our enemies were inside the country, and then watch us tear each other apart.
      - Muromec 2y ago
        >He then went on to what he considered dangerous and mentioned a couple of powders which you can easily bring on board which are much more devastating. So this is why we also can't bring own cocaine on board in addition to not having own booze. What a shame
  - twelve40 2y ago
    bingo! for long-haul flights (>10hrs) i'd even bring two zip locks. Relax and fall asleep right during takeoff while everyone else has to wait for the stupid cart forever.
rsynnott 2y ago
> You can't remove the part where you have to travel to an airport, generally out of town. Some airports have good connections. In the last month I've been to Berlin and Brussels, and in each case my train journey into the city was about 15-20 minutes (caveat: I happened to be going to the right side of Berlin for the airport, and the Brussels train, while central, was _bizarrely_ expensive). Of course, some airports, not so much. Grumble mutter Dublin (there is some hope of a rail line, or possibly _two_ rail lines, in about 2040, but until then it's a choice of painfully slow standard buses (1 hour into city), or expensive unreliable express buses (25 mins into city, if they show up)). But for many routes, really security, and the sheer poor layout of the airport, is the big slowdown. My favourite for this is London City; the (small, weird) plane lands, you walk out a door, and you are at a DLR stop. Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that.
- lordnacho 2y ago
  > Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that. I don't know why there isn't just a bunch of seats in the terminal laid out the same way as the plane. Sit there and wait, and then when it's time to board, the people at the end get on first, tada, everyone is boarded and we're not stopping each other from getting in.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In practice, the airlines order status of various kinds when boarding which roughly correlates to how much money people spend with the airline.
    - technothrasher 2y ago
      Yep, and the status folks want to both board first and be in the front of the plane, which clogs everything up during boarding.
thmsths 2y ago
I really wish we had strict SLAs for airport security. Like 10 minutes average 20 minutes for the 95% percentile and a guarantee that it will never exceed 30 minutes. Seeing lines form around the block and passengers having to wait hours to clear security in some extreme cases is simply not acceptable.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  It isn't, but changes that require additional staffing simply aren't going to be tolerated. If you add more staff, that directly translates to higher ticket prices because passengers directly pay for most of the TSA costs. If you expand facilities, that takes away from the valuable real estate the airport would rather use to sell you magazines and duty free. It also harms their Clear revenue stream, who pays airports to make security lines worse as a means to convince people to sign up.
  - thmsths 2y ago
    Or we could streamline the process: remove steps that are taking too long for little benefit (typically asking people to remove their shoes) and automate more.
- TuringNYC 2y ago
  >> I really wish we had strict SLAs for airport security. What they should really have is a line for clueless people. You know, the people ahead of you who walk thru metal detectors with belts. Then aw-shucks and waste another 5minutes. Then they forgot to take their laptops out of their bag. Aw-shucks again. Then they want to unlace their shoes. I'd love to have a line for clued-in travelers and one for people who arent.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    If only it was only a belt. I've had multiple times where I was behind someone with a concealed firearm that tried to walk through security who somehow "forgot" they had it. One time it seemed the person was on probation as well and shouldn't have even had access to firearms! Fun times in Texas.
cameldrv 2y ago
Security doesn’t have to be that variable. Flights are all planned weeks in advance. TSA can pretty exactly predict the passenger volume in time to schedule enough workers, it’s just that sometimes they don’t. If they were going to be short staffed and needed people to come early, they could notify the airline and the airline could notify you that you needed to come early that day.
ghaff 2y ago
Or you're traveling to an airport near the city from out of town. For me it's over an hour and the associated cost--rarely drive myself--is often as much as the flight.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
Solution: giant tunnel to underground downtown terminal. Planes land outside the city, taxi to the downtown terminal.
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  Denver's airport is apart from the actual city, and there are light rail lines connecting it with downtown. That system... does not work very well, owing to crappy light rail and the fact that most people still aren't where they need to be even if they took that to Union Station. If you're suggesting this hypothetical giant tunnel would actually have the planes taxiing all the way to a whole airport underneath a city... I don't see that solving more problems than it would create.
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    Yes, the planes taxi to a terminal under the city. It would create problems, but the problems would be for the designers and maintainers of the infrastructure, not for the passengers. Airplanes are not fundamentally that much bigger than trains, which routinely go under the city.
    - trothamel 2y ago
      Yes, they are - if you count wings, which are the main point of a plane.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - pfannkuchen 2y ago
        So as a reader one can assume that either a) I forgot about the wings (I guess I must be an idiot) or b) I am using a broader set of reference objects than simply "current passenger transportation modes". There are many man made objects much bigger than airplane wings. Fitting an aircraft carrier, or a container ship, or a skyscraper, moving under a city, would be much, much harder than fitting an airplane. Not to mention that if we strongly applied this engineering constraint, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that we could produce airliners with removable or foldable wings, or where the passenger compartment slides out, or tunnels with deep grooves for the wings, etc.
mattkrause 2y ago
> Security also seems to be variable This has always confused me because it seems like it seems like the easiest possible prediction problem. Nearly everyone buys their tickets in advance, often weeks ahead of time. Why can’t they text you the day before and say “The airport will be quiet/normal/chaotic for your flight tomorrow, so please arrive 1/2/3 hours before takeoff?”
- jesterson 2y ago
  Would you change your plans to arrive earlier/later if airport is chaotic/quiet? I wouldnt, doesn't matter if airport is in bloody state of war.
  - Mashimo 2y ago
    Yeah, I would. On a quiet day I measured 7 minutes from stepping out of the bus and being through security.
  - mattkrause 2y ago
    I wouldn’t change the flight itself, but I’d certainly use it to decide when I set out for the airport. Not by a ton but it’s easily the difference between a leisurely farewell breakfast and scarfing down a muffin on the run.

throwway120385 2y ago

A shopping mall which you can't leave and in which you aren't allowed to bring your own drinks with few exceptions.

cwmma 2y ago
can bring a quart zip lock bag stuffed to brim with nips (50ml bottles of booze) through TSA security. While you are technically not allowed to drink them on the plane absolutely nobody gives a shit as long as you are not an idiot about it.
- ghaff 2y ago
  And you can also bring an empty water bottle that there are often stations setup for the purpose of filling next to water fountains. Mind you, I'm annoyed at the liquids thing given I used to routinely bring bottles of wine or a local liqueur home in carry-on. And I can't any longer.
  - cycomanic 2y ago
    I recall when those guys in the UK (?) had their plan to explode a plane by mixing some volatile chemicals in the plane toilet. IIRC this kicked off the whole no liquids requirements. At the time I remember reading an article by a chemist on the chances of actually pulling off what they wee planning to do, and it was comical. To not just make a giant poof that mainly singed off some hair they needed to carefully mix the liquids in an ice bath for about 1h (without anyone noticing) and every little shake could potentially mess up the whole thing. He then went on to what he considered dangerous and mentioned a couple of powders which you can easily bring on board which are much more devastating.
    - throwway120385 2y ago
      I think the point of it was that our enemies had figured out that the way to destroy America wasn't to kill our leaders, but rather to convince us that our enemies were inside the country, and then watch us tear each other apart.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      >He then went on to what he considered dangerous and mentioned a couple of powders which you can easily bring on board which are much more devastating. So this is why we also can't bring own cocaine on board in addition to not having own booze. What a shame
- twelve40 2y ago
  bingo! for long-haul flights (>10hrs) i'd even bring two zip locks. Relax and fall asleep right during takeoff while everyone else has to wait for the stupid cart forever.

rsynnott 2y ago

> You can't remove the part where you have to travel to an airport, generally out of town. Some airports have good connections. In the last month I've been to Berlin and Brussels, and in each case my train journey into the city was about 15-20 minutes (caveat: I happened to be going to the right side of Berlin for the airport, and the Brussels train, while central, was _bizarrely_ expensive). Of course, some airports, not so much. Grumble mutter Dublin (there is some hope of a rail line, or possibly _two_ rail lines, in about 2040, but until then it's a choice of painfully slow standard buses (1 hour into city), or expensive unreliable express buses (25 mins into city, if they show up)). But for many routes, really security, and the sheer poor layout of the airport, is the big slowdown. My favourite for this is London City; the (small, weird) plane lands, you walk out a door, and you are at a DLR stop. Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that.

lordnacho 2y ago
> Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that. I don't know why there isn't just a bunch of seats in the terminal laid out the same way as the plane. Sit there and wait, and then when it's time to board, the people at the end get on first, tada, everyone is boarded and we're not stopping each other from getting in.
- ghaff 2y ago
  In practice, the airlines order status of various kinds when boarding which roughly correlates to how much money people spend with the airline.
  - technothrasher 2y ago
    Yep, and the status folks want to both board first and be in the front of the plane, which clogs everything up during boarding.

thmsths 2y ago

I really wish we had strict SLAs for airport security. Like 10 minutes average 20 minutes for the 95% percentile and a guarantee that it will never exceed 30 minutes. Seeing lines form around the block and passengers having to wait hours to clear security in some extreme cases is simply not acceptable.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
It isn't, but changes that require additional staffing simply aren't going to be tolerated. If you add more staff, that directly translates to higher ticket prices because passengers directly pay for most of the TSA costs. If you expand facilities, that takes away from the valuable real estate the airport would rather use to sell you magazines and duty free. It also harms their Clear revenue stream, who pays airports to make security lines worse as a means to convince people to sign up.
- thmsths 2y ago
  Or we could streamline the process: remove steps that are taking too long for little benefit (typically asking people to remove their shoes) and automate more.
TuringNYC 2y ago
>> I really wish we had strict SLAs for airport security. What they should really have is a line for clueless people. You know, the people ahead of you who walk thru metal detectors with belts. Then aw-shucks and waste another 5minutes. Then they forgot to take their laptops out of their bag. Aw-shucks again. Then they want to unlace their shoes. I'd love to have a line for clued-in travelers and one for people who arent.
- vel0city 2y ago
  If only it was only a belt. I've had multiple times where I was behind someone with a concealed firearm that tried to walk through security who somehow "forgot" they had it. One time it seemed the person was on probation as well and shouldn't have even had access to firearms! Fun times in Texas.

cameldrv 2y ago

Security doesn’t have to be that variable. Flights are all planned weeks in advance. TSA can pretty exactly predict the passenger volume in time to schedule enough workers, it’s just that sometimes they don’t. If they were going to be short staffed and needed people to come early, they could notify the airline and the airline could notify you that you needed to come early that day.

ghaff 2y ago

Or you're traveling to an airport near the city from out of town. For me it's over an hour and the associated cost--rarely drive myself--is often as much as the flight.

pfannkuchen 2y ago

Solution: giant tunnel to underground downtown terminal. Planes land outside the city, taxi to the downtown terminal.

jacobgkau 2y ago
Denver's airport is apart from the actual city, and there are light rail lines connecting it with downtown. That system... does not work very well, owing to crappy light rail and the fact that most people still aren't where they need to be even if they took that to Union Station. If you're suggesting this hypothetical giant tunnel would actually have the planes taxiing all the way to a whole airport underneath a city... I don't see that solving more problems than it would create.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  Yes, the planes taxi to a terminal under the city. It would create problems, but the problems would be for the designers and maintainers of the infrastructure, not for the passengers. Airplanes are not fundamentally that much bigger than trains, which routinely go under the city.
  - trothamel 2y ago
    Yes, they are - if you count wings, which are the main point of a plane.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - pfannkuchen 2y ago
      So as a reader one can assume that either a) I forgot about the wings (I guess I must be an idiot) or b) I am using a broader set of reference objects than simply "current passenger transportation modes". There are many man made objects much bigger than airplane wings. Fitting an aircraft carrier, or a container ship, or a skyscraper, moving under a city, would be much, much harder than fitting an airplane. Not to mention that if we strongly applied this engineering constraint, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that we could produce airliners with removable or foldable wings, or where the passenger compartment slides out, or tunnels with deep grooves for the wings, etc.

mattkrause 2y ago

> Security also seems to be variable This has always confused me because it seems like it seems like the easiest possible prediction problem. Nearly everyone buys their tickets in advance, often weeks ahead of time. Why can’t they text you the day before and say “The airport will be quiet/normal/chaotic for your flight tomorrow, so please arrive 1/2/3 hours before takeoff?”

jesterson 2y ago
Would you change your plans to arrive earlier/later if airport is chaotic/quiet? I wouldnt, doesn't matter if airport is in bloody state of war.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  Yeah, I would. On a quiet day I measured 7 minutes from stepping out of the bus and being through security.
- mattkrause 2y ago
  I wouldn’t change the flight itself, but I’d certainly use it to decide when I set out for the airport. Not by a ton but it’s easily the difference between a leisurely farewell breakfast and scarfing down a muffin on the run.