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Is air travel getting worse?
- eddythompson80 1y agoAt least the comments there are better than the article
- hulitu 1y ago> Is Air Travel Getting Worse? More delays, fewer accidents, and lower prices Lower prices ? Where ? In EU surely not.
- barbazoo 1y agoWay too cheap. A flight from London to Rome is CAD150. That doesn't even cover the 100kg CO2 that flight emits.
- dkiebd 1y agoWe have no idea how much that CO2 will cost to remove since we don't have the technology, and that is assuming that we need to remove it, so I don't understand why you think that is "way too cheap"?
- timeon 1y ago> and that is assuming that we need to remove it Do you think there is no man-made climate change?
- pfdietz 1y agoThe current price of 100kg of CO2 credits is about 7 euros.
- the_mitsuhiko 1y agoMy air fares in Europe ha stayed shockingly stable. My home base is in Vienna and my trips have stayed stable. Which is impressive if you consider inflation and energy prices.
- octo888 1y agoLike for like (baggage etc)? Or have you accepted less - packed less etc?
- mrighele 1y agoI agree with you. My flights back home cost double now than they did 5 years ago.
- mcphage 1y agoAirfare alone isn’t a great indicator of price, since airlines have been reducing benefits—luggage generally is an upcharge now, whereas it used to be built into the ticket price.
- teaearlgraycold 1y agoI'm lucky I'm able to travel with just a backpack.
- hombre_fatal 1y agoA 45L backpack ("personal item") and a 50L duffle bag (carry-on) give you a huge amount of space sufficient for pretty much any travels on the cheapest ticket. It's $300 but the Peak Design backpack is amazing. It has one massive compartment which makes it easy to efficiently cram stuff in there. https://www.peakdesign.com/products/travel-backpack?Size=45L&Color=Sage https://www.peakdesign.com/products/travel-backpack?Size=45L... Most backpacks seem to compete on maximizing pocket count which isn't good for tetris packing.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoEvery flight I've been on this year, except one, has demanded people check bags at the gate before Group 1 even finishes boarding. Although, this seems to apply only to hardshell wheeled cases - I walked aboard with my backpack & shoulder bag without any issues, and fit my backpack into an overhead compartment and shoulder bag under my seat with no problems. But next time, I may try to pack everything into a single backpack, and re-configure things once I'm in my seat so I have easy access to a smaller subset of stuff in my shoulderbag instead.
- hombre_fatal 1y agoWow, that's annoying. If I see that happening and I'm traveling light enough, I've merged my backpack into my duffle bag so that I have one single "personal item" for under the seat in front of me. Nobody ever seems to care that it doesn't cleanly fit. But jeez, forcing check-ins during Group 1 is worse than I've ever seen it. I guess it's more and more popular to use two hard-shell carry-ons and put them into the overhead compartment. And I guess the airline just sees it as an incentive for you to buy a more expensive seat.
- scottjg 1y agoIn May, Newark airport flights were on time 49% of the time: https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ot_delay/OT_DelayCause1.asp?20=E&fry=N&Nv42146=Rje&Nv42146_anzr=ar9n4x,%20aW:%20ar9n4x%20Yvor46B%20V06r40n6v10ny https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ot_delay/OT_DelayCause1.asp?20... Maybe in aggregate flights have fewer delays but every single flight I’ve taken this year has been delayed (on top of the padded flight times the article mentions). I’ve flown about half a dozen trips. I also hate the argument that the free market should solve the pricing problem. Airlines have exclusivity on airport gates. Any frequent flier on the SFO -> EWR route knows that if you want to save money you can book an Alaska flight instead of United but Alaska has significantly fewer gates and usually gets delayed when arriving waiting for one. Flights aren’t exactly equal commodities and even if the airlines were well-run, contracts for these gates are locked in. Pricing stats here also fail to account for business class vs economy pricing. Business class prices on tickets have skyrocketed, way outstripping purported CPI. In some cases prices have doubled or more since COVID.
- avar 1y agoPerhaps the free market is solving the pricing/timeliness problem, but your fellow travelers value lower prices more than being on time? > Business class prices on > tickets have skyrocketed The people with more disposable income who are subsidizing air travel for the rest of us are giving us an even larger subsidy these days? I feel just terrible about that.
- mrguyorama 1y ago>The people with more disposable income Business class tickets are bought by companies not people. You pay for that "subsidy" through more expensive products to pay for that exec's stupid flight to a symposium where they all talk about how great they are and how important their ideas are.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y agoEvery time I've flown First/Business class, it's been out of my own pocket. Every time I've had my employer pay for a flight, it's been in cattle class. Now I'm wondering what percentage of people in First/Business class are paying for the flight themselves.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Damogran6 1y agoI will say I've been on a number of flights that left late but arrived early/on-time. I think they build a pad into flight time and/or give up fuel efficiency to make up time.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y agoThere was an article posted to HN recently (today, even!) that showed how airlines do pad their flight times deliberately. I think it's reasonable. Even if you depart the gate on time, there could be things out of the airliners' control that cause delays, such as a long queue to take off.
- gottorf 1y agoNot captured in numbers or the article, but I've noticed service becoming a lot poorer, though perhaps the downward trend has stopped for now. Between 2021-2024 or so, I encountered a lot of people working for airlines (gate agents, flight attendants, etc.) who really went out of their way to make me feel like they're doing me a favor by letting me fly on their plane. That's not to say that the average airline worker is like that; it just seemed like the bottom fell out, so that the floor on what my worst experience could be while flying became substantially worse compared to times before.
- nickff 1y agoIn my experience, there has been a wide-spread (across the retail and service economy) decline in how customer service personnel treat customers, and it seems like it might actually be deeper than that (extending throughout young people's attitudes towards their jobs).
- shigawire 1y agoIn my experience, there has been a widespread decline in how customers treat service personnel. There is just a widespread kindness gap in our society.
- gottorf 1y agoQuite right, I'm sure. But the part that I'm more interested about is why it feels like the floor got so much lower? I don't know that the average interaction in public (in any context, not just flying) is any or substantially worse, but it seems like the variation to the downside got more extreme.
- SoftTalker 1y agoYoung people feel (either really or they have been convinced) that employers don't care about them, pay them slave wages, and will generally abuse them so they feel the same way in return -- no loyalty, no care other than getting the next paycheck.
- micromacrofoot 1y agoprivate equity combined with regulatory capture
- HDThoreaun 1y agoWhich airlines are owned by private equity?
- rootsudo 1y agosouthwest
- HDThoreaun 1y agoSouthwest is a public company. Elliott Investment Management owns 11% of southwest. Elliot is a hedge fund, not private equity, but thats semantics. More importantly, Elliot purchased its position in direct response to the holiday meltdown in 2022. Im not a southwest flier, but it seems their problems started before the capital moved in.
- Stevvo 1y agoBudget airlines is Europe have figured out an evil approach to avoiding delays. Airlines are eligible to pay compensation for delays longer than two hours. So they start boarding the aircraft 1.5 hrs after departure, close the doors at the 2 hour mark and then spend the next hours sitting on the tarmac while depriving the passengers of food and drink.
- jplrssn 1y agoThis strategy would save them having to issue food vouchers at the airport, but not delay compensation per se which is based on arrival time at the destination gate.
- madcaptenor 1y agoSeems simple enough to stop that - start requiring compensation to be paid based on takeoff time.
- gampleman 1y agoOr even worse, they load all the passengers into a bus and... just leave them there for an hour or so. And of course the buses are packed with most passengers standing.
- drewg123 1y agoI wonder how much of the increased schedule times are due to baggage fees? Here is my theory: In 2008, airlines began charging for checked bags[1]. This was done both for the immediate revenue increase, and also to prod flyers into airline loyalty programs or airline credit cards to get a free checked bag. However, that caused a lot of casual fliers to go carryon-only. That, in turn, causes it to take longer to board/exit planes, leading to longer turn around times. I've long contended that airlines should get rid of checked bag fees. And if they feel like they really want to be evil, switch the fees to carryons. That would decrease the number of carryons and decrease the turnaround time. EDIT: From the article "Starting around 2008, Scheduled flight times began increasing even faster than actual ones" This has me convinced that the bag fees really torpedoed turnaround times. [1] https://www.farecompare.com/travel-advice/airline-fees-bags-history/ https://www.farecompare.com/travel-advice/airline-fees-bags-...
- MaKey 1y agoSometimes there isn’t even enough space in the cabin for all carry-ons, so you have to leave yours with a baggage handler in front of the plane.
- pigeons 1y agoVery often.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoAnd I assume that adds a bunch of time to the boarding process as well. Generally no bag fees if they have to check those, either.
- bugglebeetle 1y agoI also experienced recently that gate agents will lie about this to decrease turn around time if a plane is running late. We were forced to gate check ours after being told the plane was too full to hold all, only to get onboard and find ample space. When we asked the flight attendant, they apologized and said they did not tell them to do this, but it’s unfortunately common at airports with frequent delays. So charge ridiculous bag fees, forcing everyone to carry on, which delays boarding, so they lie to you and check your bag for free (which maybe you would’ve done to begin with if that was an option), only to board a plane and feel duped. All around great experience!
- Hnrobert42 1y agoI am really curious about the sinusoidal delay graph. It seems like average flight times rise and fall once a year. Is it summer travel then holiday travel then a winter spring slump? That would support the author's hypothesis that congestion is to blame.
- ffitch 1y agoGreat analysis! a couple of comments: 1. the airfare inflation chart is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI which is calculated differently from the other metrics in the article; it does take into account routes popularity. 2. today’s average Economy ticket is different from the 1990s ticket: meals, seat pitch, seat selection, baggage. service changed to the point that 1990 Standard Economy is more similar to 2025 Premium Economy.
- exabrial 1y agoGo read the union agreement between united american airlines pilots and united airlines if you want something infuriating. We could have much lower prices and operating under the same federal safety guidelines, but rich ass pilots are exploiting collective bargaining to keep their salaries unbelievably high when they don't need to be.
- lenerdenator 1y agoIt's said here [0] that they make an average of $160,970 a year. That's not... rich, not in 2025. That's comfortable in most major American cities, but not rich. And then you have to take into account the fact that these pilots are away from home quite often, and have dozens, if not hundreds, of lives in their hands when they do their jobs, and that makes me think they're fairly compensated for doing the actual labor that the company needs to operate. Meanwhile, the CEOs make more in a year than most Americans will make in an entire lifetime [1]. And that's not even getting into some of the dividends that airlines pay people who just happen to possess a piece of paper. [0]https://simpleflying.com/salary-us-pilot-2025/ https://simpleflying.com/salary-us-pilot-2025/ [1]https://onemileatatime.com/insights/highest-paid-airline-ceo/ https://onemileatatime.com/insights/highest-paid-airline-ceo...
- lokar 1y agoAnd to get to that 160k spot they spent years further down the chain working bad routes for much worse pay
- exabrial 1y ago[flagged]
- QAkICoU7IDNkpFu 1y agoIf put to the test, who would be faster on HN at jumping "out right on queue" The union drone or the engagement bot?
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
- mensetmanusman 1y agoIt should get worse, Covid shocked the system and we know from perturbation theory how long the shock will take to ripple through time.
- stemlord 1y agoBut we bailed them out during covid
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoThis is pretty funny. It's like a case study in the armchair expert. Here's a person who is not a travel industry veteran, but was curious about something, so they just started googling facts and figures, tried to find a trend, then looked for evidence to back up the trend they were looking for, then googled for "explanations" (read: news articles from mainstream media) to justify the trends they were looking for. At no time did they actually talk to somebody in the travel industry. Just a lot of googling, vague questions, and hand-wavey answers. The weirdest part is how subjective the question is. It's like saying, is life getting worse? It turns out there's more than a few ways of looking at that. Air travel is cheap and widely available, despite coming out of a global pandemic, not to mention the global recession before that, among other minor blips. Oh, but you were delayed in getting in your magic metal tube that hurtles through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, letting you sip beer and watch movies in your PJs while traveling thousands of miles in a few hours, arriving safer than any other form of transportation? Man, that's terrible.
- mhb 1y agoWhy does he need to talk to someone in the travel industry to evaluate the experience of traveling? Yes, we all agree with Louis CK that just being able to fly is a marvel. But it still sucks and it has gotten worse.
- tekla 1y agoMass availability, hilarious cheapness, and ease of access makes things worse, News at 11.
- geodel 1y agoIt is news because a lot of people intuitively don't get this point. Also they would not show at 11 as news would rather be promoting more travel instead of covering downsides.
- thrown-0825 1y agoFor many people making something more accessible is the same thing as making it worse.
- sans_souse 1y agoHow have we not solved the issue of getting everyones baggage off the plane in a timely manner. We've been using these conveyor belt-carousels for over 50 years and the same process for loading and unloading, but people shouldnt have to plan on waiting 45+ minutes after they deplane for their personal belongings in 2025. Lost luggage? The whole system seems archaic to me.
- speakfreely 1y agoIf you think about the complexity of routing bags from a single plane on to potentially dozens of connecting flights and onto the non-connecting carousel, it's actually amazing that the process is not screwed up more frequently.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoI mean the bags have barcodes with their destination on them.
- speakfreely 1y agoOf course, but no one is taking the bag physically so its destination. They're putting them on moving pathways that are matched to ever-changing information about gates, flight numbers, etc. Flights arrive early or late or never at all, gates change frequently due to airport congestion. And the workers who are managing this are not known for their precision, so it has to be a super fault tolerant system.
- habosa 1y agoAlaska guarantees bags within 20m of landing. It’s not impossible, most airlines just don’t give a shit because people tend to mentally blame the airport not the airline for baggage experience issues.
- MinimalAction 1y agoAir travel is a mixed bag. Inflight entertainment systems, free Wi-Fi (for at least messaging), better airports etc. try to reduce the hassle the system has introduced over the years. But also, the number of personal flights that are delayed by more than an hour was concerning in the recent days. The stipulated times were only a suggestion, and the real time depends pretty much on factors that almost nobody has any control on. The schedules for flights have become so tight that only a perfect world without inconsistencies can handle that dense a network. Throw in the climate change, and it is expected.
- CoastalCoder 1y ago> Air travel is a mixed bag. Oops, that's gonna cost you extra.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>Air travel is a mixed bag. I stopped flying twenty five years ago. I think it's one of the better decisions I've made.
- bravesoul2 1y agoGlad a question in a title wasn't a clear no. In this case its maybe, it is in the eye of the beholder, choose your own adventure.
- JCharante 1y agoair travel is getting better, people just don't put in effort to learn how to do it it's like picking the cheapest restaurant every time and complaining you get crap food you have to research which restaurant to go to
- octo888 1y agoI agree long haul. Eg choosing Emirates A380 in Economy But short haul, it's like having a choice between McDonalds or Burger King. 28" vs 29" pitch. £40 vs £50 for a checked bag etc.
- kiwijamo 1y agoIt's tricky tho cos Emirates B777 in Economy is not great so does depend on whether the route you're flying is guaranteed to have a A380. Flew them recently where one leg was A380 and the other B777, and could not be A380 for both legs.
- octo888 1y agoOh yeah absolutely. All part of the research! Google Flights shows the aircraft type, which is useful (though of course the caveat is there can be substitutions on the day)
- forgotTheLast 1y agoI don't fly on widebody aircraft very often so I don't consider myself an expert, but long flights in B777 economy class with a 3-4-3 seat configuration shouldn't be legal
- octo888 1y agoHaha totally agree! The move to 3-4-3 on the 777 was a pivotal moment of the enshittificafion of air travel IIRC
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- dmayle 1y agoThis is one of the hot button topics, but I was surprised to see the (false) reference to the FAA having race and gender quotas. This was suggested to me six months ago by someone who was extreme right wing, (going as far as to say that the FAA only hired non-white employees) and I found the claims bizarre enough to research on my own. They claimed that this was a known fact, whether you read left or right news sources, but when I did my research (not on bias, but on actual hiring results), it said that historically, the FAA has been about 90% white, and currently is about 70% white (IIRC), which is a far cry from suggesting that the FAA has race and gender quotas. Again, here, the article makes the same claim, but this time with a citation (!), so I wondered if there was some truth to it, that I missed, earlier, but again, the truth does not pan out. It seems that a few members of the NBCFAE (National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees) stepped over the line in their attempts to to change hiring practices that were preventing black candidates from being considered (going from increasing the diversity of the candidate pool, which is laudable, to discriminating in order to change up the racial mix, which is illegal). However, in all of this, it's not the FAA acting, just a few powerful individuals from the NBCFAE. That doesn't change the fact that something bad happened, just the characterization of it ends up being completely misleading.
- seemaze 1y agoI you’re going to treat me like cargo, bill me like freight.
- grishka 1y agoAccording to my own limited experience, yes, it is getting worse. Airlines cut their costs hard during covid, but never undid most of those changes after covid was over. So now you have non-low-cost airlines that charge extra for luggage, for example. Or not provide a meal during a 5-hour flight. Or flight schedules so bad that booking sites insist that the best option to get form one European capital to another, with only constraint that you need to get there in the evening of a particular day, is 3 separate flights taking 2/3 of that day.
- Zigurd 1y agoThere's something off about blaming mass availability and low prices for poor travel experiences. My poor travel experiences are due to airlines lying about delays and having inadequate resources to deal with the problems that led to those delays. The trade-off isn't that there are men in cargo shorts on my flight because it's cheap, it's at the airline will strand you in some hell hole and won't pick up the phone for hours.
- CommenterPerson 1y agoInteresting analysis. 1. What about the annual peaks roughly 5 minutes. Seem to occur in winter? I would have thought summer delays are more, on the average? 2. Mentioning DEI at FAA without any substantial data tarnishes an otherwise interesting study.
- antithesizer 1y agoHow anyone could seriously doubt that the answer is 'yes' is beyond me. I mean aside from people who just don't fly much.
- skybrian 1y agoMore padding seems like an improvement if you're trying to make a connection and don't want to miss it. This is true even though it will also result in more waiting for the next flight on average. Efficiency is at odds with reliability. If you're not making a connection, I don't see any downside to arriving earlier than expected. You have a bit more time to do what you please.