7 ms·

It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect. If I have to be at Heathrow 90 min before departure, and it takes me 45 min to d

It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect. If I have to be at Heathrow 90 min before departure, and it takes me 45 min to drive there, or 90 min on public transport, then at the other end it takes 30 mins for my bag to get on the belt, clear port control, and another 30-60 min to get to the city. I have a good 4 hours of fixed time involved with my flight. If the flight is just 8 hours, making it 7 hours isn't really going to change things, I've still lost the most of the day. So I'd sooner be able to sleep comfortably (ie space!) or be able to do some work (11 vaio Pro, 22 hours battery). Then we have the issue that even going supersonic, we can't just upsticks and do it. We have to get out to see. Climbing to FL390 takes a lot of time, descending from it does as well, otherwise people generally find it rather un-appealing. Add in busy hub airport traffic and we've got at least 2 hours that we can't really speed up. So our 12 hour total journy (4 hours travelling too / waiting at airports, 6 hours of cruise, 2 hours of holding an NDB) speeding up that 6 hours, doesn't have much effect. Hell go nuts, make it take 2 hours, go for mach 3. It is still going to take me, door to door, 8 hours. 8 vs 12 for the cost of that just isn't going to be worth it. Because ultimately I'll have my own work schedule, I'm not rich enough to have a private jet, and the stuff I fly you wouldn't want to be in for more than 4 hours anyway (well the fuel would run out too). So that means I want a regular, frequent service. I don't care that superfastjet leaves everyday at 1pm. I need to be around till 5pm. Obviously the geek in me would take the fast one, but I couldn't do that everytime. TLDR It isn't just about being cheaper. It is recognising the deminishing impact speed is having on being the deciding factor. We look at door to door time, not cruise performance. We want a frequent schedule, not one speedbird a day.

bergie 13y ago
Exactly the reason why the (much slower) train often makes more sense. Sure, the train from Amsterdam to Berlin is six hours. But you only have to be at the station to catch it before it leaves, and it both leaves and arrives right in the center. We tried this returning from a conference there last fall, and the hotel-door-to-home-door advantage of flying was less than 30 minutes. And on train there was more space, better food, and a bar. Not to mention that there was power and nobody told me to shut down my laptop at any point :-)
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  Well this is a great example of when I do pay for the premium. If I am going to Amsterdamn from London, I'll fly CityJet from LCY. London City Airport is brilliant. Mostly because its only used by frequent travellers, no people pushing right up to the baggage belt here, people all know they can spot and politely walk up to grab. If your going to Antwerpen, their local airport is brilliant as well. LCY if you've only got carry on, you need only arrive 15 min before your flight. Most routes flown have 6-10 flights a day. I have left the city (London) at 6pm, and been checked in to my hotel, having a nice trappist beer by 9pm on more than one occasion. When you consider you can do the London to Antwerpn route for £120, return, including baggage, it is really brilliant. It's a 45 min flight total. The thing here is, its the ground facilities that make it so painless.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  this is my position. If I have internet and a power outlet, one place is as good as another, why take the hit on degrading security, exorbitant fee's, and cramped conditions for a few extra hours? Trains are efficient. We need to use them more.
  - pyre 13y ago
    Trains have degraded security though. Once a plane leaves, someone has to be on the plane or have had access to it beforehand to affect the flight. You can defend against this through security at those specific points. On a train, the entire trip is over miles of tracks which 'anyone' can access. Security at boarding doesn't affect the attack surface area as much. That said, I might prefer train travel to flying.
    - aidenn0 13y ago
      "Degrading" security not "degraded" security. I think the post you are replying to is implying that they would rather take the small risk of being blown up on a train over the certainty of being treated like a terrorist at the airport.
    - PanMan 13y ago
shin_lao 13y ago
It's actually cheaper and faster to fly 1st, cut through all lines and be able to board at the last minute than to fly at Mach 1.
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  Well Elon Musk has a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39 But sadly, its not Mach1, but a hell of a lot more fun than an airliner. My goal is the much more reasonable SR-22 turbo, just need to get my instrument raiting first.
  - qrybam 13y ago
    Nice - why is the safety record so bad on the SR-22? I thought it had a chute!
    - mikeash 13y ago
      The chute might be why: false sense of security. As a safety measure, it's like an air bag in a car. It can turn some bad situations into ones that are somewhat less bad. But I get the impression that a lot of Cirrus pilots treat it as a get-out-of-jail-free card instead of the last-ditch safety measure that it is. There's also the danger that comes with any expensive, high-powered, prestigious airplane, namely that people with more money than time will see it as a great place to start flying and will end up exceeding their abilities and experience. For an earlier example of this, see the Bonanza and its reputation as a "doctor killer". Flying is tough, flying high-performance aircraft is tougher, and people with lots of money may try to take shortcuts they really shouldn't.
  - fragmede 13y ago
    Of course, as long as we're fantasizing about the toys for the rich, Larry Ellison owns a Mig-29, which is capable of Mach 2.25.
  - shin_lao 13y ago
    The SR22 is an excellent choice, however pardon me if I'll try to favour our European industry instead. :)
melling 13y ago
In the New York City area, there are millions of people within 50 miles of 3 major airports. I'm 20 minutes by cab from one of them. I'd love to cut a 6-7 hour trip to most places by half. Ideally, I should be able to land in JFK, take a 15 minute maglev to Newark and take a connecting flight. Air travel could be so much better.
SeanLuke 13y ago
> It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect. For me this is not remotely true. It's not an issue of spending N hours in travel. It's an issue of spending N hours cooped up in a tight and uncomfortable seat, unable to sleep and developing deep vein thrombosis, on a bumpy airplane filled with recycled oxygen and passengers with all sorts of airborne illnesses. Inevitably I have a variety of, erm, digestive issues after long flights. For me it's bad enough that I have a special rule: the number of days I must stay at a remote destination must exceed the number of hours I spend flying to get there. This rule does not apply to trains or cars or buses, nor layovers in airports. Just planes. Given the choice between spending 5 hours on a plane and 15 hours in an airport, or just 10 hours on a plane, I'd pick the former in a heartbeat.
- WildUtah 13y ago
  Next time, you can get a comfortable, roomy seat that folds into a flat bed in the front section of the plane where they serve nice hot cooked food with caviar appetizers and ice cream sundae desserts and pump in a higher partial pressure of oxygen so you can get work done. Sure, it's expensive. Still, it's a lot less expensive than the Concorde used to be and than supersonic travel would be if it were available today. So probably even you would choose against OP's high speed flight.
- goblin89 13y ago
  I'm going to apply your rule too from now on, but with different exceptions (writing this from an uncomfortable bus seat in the middle of 12-hour ride).
  - SeanLuke 13y ago
    Okay, maybe buses.
- goblin89 13y ago
  I'm going to apply your rule too from now on, but with different exceptions (writing this from an uncomfortable bus seat in the middle of 12-hour ride).
- 13y ago
vpeters25 13y ago
My last sky trip from Dallas to Colorado: - 30 mins drive to airport - Another 15-30 bus from parking to terminal - 15-30 mins check-in and get through TSA. - At least 1 hr to walk to gate and wait for boarding. - 30 mins for boarding - At least another 30 mins for the plane taxing around that huge airport to reach the runway. then in Denver: - 15 mins taxing - 15 mins unboarding - 30 mins train to baggage claim and collect baggage - 30 mins bus to rental car - 1.5 hrs drive to mountain resort Total: 7.5 hrs of which only 1.5 are the actual flight (400% overhead) Driving from Dallas to Breckenridge, CO takes 13 hrs so it's still half the time, unless there are delays at the airport (Btw, my trip back took 10 hrs) Airports and planes are so huge the overhead is reaching ridiculous levels, and we are building bigger and more complex ones instead of evolving flight control technology to make flying itself easier and safer. We still use the same basic principles of flight control invented 130+ years ago, unfortunately, unless we discover a way to defeat gravity without using thrust and/or lift, this is the best we've got.
bjeanes 13y ago
> 8 vs 12 for the cost of that just isn't going to be worth it. Which makes it exactly about cost. It's not worth it for that difference. If it was 10% more would you pay it? I would. But being 5x, 10x, 20x suddenly makes it too expensive. I'd rather pay less than get there that fast.

bergie 13y ago

Exactly the reason why the (much slower) train often makes more sense. Sure, the train from Amsterdam to Berlin is six hours. But you only have to be at the station to catch it before it leaves, and it both leaves and arrives right in the center. We tried this returning from a conference there last fall, and the hotel-door-to-home-door advantage of flying was less than 30 minutes. And on train there was more space, better food, and a bar. Not to mention that there was power and nobody told me to shut down my laptop at any point :-)

TheAnimus 13y ago
Well this is a great example of when I do pay for the premium. If I am going to Amsterdamn from London, I'll fly CityJet from LCY. London City Airport is brilliant. Mostly because its only used by frequent travellers, no people pushing right up to the baggage belt here, people all know they can spot and politely walk up to grab. If your going to Antwerpen, their local airport is brilliant as well. LCY if you've only got carry on, you need only arrive 15 min before your flight. Most routes flown have 6-10 flights a day. I have left the city (London) at 6pm, and been checked in to my hotel, having a nice trappist beer by 9pm on more than one occasion. When you consider you can do the London to Antwerpn route for £120, return, including baggage, it is really brilliant. It's a 45 min flight total. The thing here is, its the ground facilities that make it so painless.
GhotiFish 13y ago
this is my position. If I have internet and a power outlet, one place is as good as another, why take the hit on degrading security, exorbitant fee's, and cramped conditions for a few extra hours? Trains are efficient. We need to use them more.
- pyre 13y ago
  Trains have degraded security though. Once a plane leaves, someone has to be on the plane or have had access to it beforehand to affect the flight. You can defend against this through security at those specific points. On a train, the entire trip is over miles of tracks which 'anyone' can access. Security at boarding doesn't affect the attack surface area as much. That said, I might prefer train travel to flying.
  - aidenn0 13y ago
    "Degrading" security not "degraded" security. I think the post you are replying to is implying that they would rather take the small risk of being blown up on a train over the certainty of being treated like a terrorist at the airport.
  - PanMan 13y ago

shin_lao 13y ago

It's actually cheaper and faster to fly 1st, cut through all lines and be able to board at the last minute than to fly at Mach 1.

TheAnimus 13y ago
Well Elon Musk has a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39 But sadly, its not Mach1, but a hell of a lot more fun than an airliner. My goal is the much more reasonable SR-22 turbo, just need to get my instrument raiting first.
- qrybam 13y ago
  Nice - why is the safety record so bad on the SR-22? I thought it had a chute!
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The chute might be why: false sense of security. As a safety measure, it's like an air bag in a car. It can turn some bad situations into ones that are somewhat less bad. But I get the impression that a lot of Cirrus pilots treat it as a get-out-of-jail-free card instead of the last-ditch safety measure that it is. There's also the danger that comes with any expensive, high-powered, prestigious airplane, namely that people with more money than time will see it as a great place to start flying and will end up exceeding their abilities and experience. For an earlier example of this, see the Bonanza and its reputation as a "doctor killer". Flying is tough, flying high-performance aircraft is tougher, and people with lots of money may try to take shortcuts they really shouldn't.
- fragmede 13y ago
  Of course, as long as we're fantasizing about the toys for the rich, Larry Ellison owns a Mig-29, which is capable of Mach 2.25.
- shin_lao 13y ago
  The SR22 is an excellent choice, however pardon me if I'll try to favour our European industry instead. :)

melling 13y ago

In the New York City area, there are millions of people within 50 miles of 3 major airports. I'm 20 minutes by cab from one of them. I'd love to cut a 6-7 hour trip to most places by half. Ideally, I should be able to land in JFK, take a 15 minute maglev to Newark and take a connecting flight. Air travel could be so much better.

SeanLuke 13y ago

> It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect. For me this is not remotely true. It's not an issue of spending N hours in travel. It's an issue of spending N hours cooped up in a tight and uncomfortable seat, unable to sleep and developing deep vein thrombosis, on a bumpy airplane filled with recycled oxygen and passengers with all sorts of airborne illnesses. Inevitably I have a variety of, erm, digestive issues after long flights. For me it's bad enough that I have a special rule: the number of days I must stay at a remote destination must exceed the number of hours I spend flying to get there. This rule does not apply to trains or cars or buses, nor layovers in airports. Just planes. Given the choice between spending 5 hours on a plane and 15 hours in an airport, or just 10 hours on a plane, I'd pick the former in a heartbeat.

WildUtah 13y ago
Next time, you can get a comfortable, roomy seat that folds into a flat bed in the front section of the plane where they serve nice hot cooked food with caviar appetizers and ice cream sundae desserts and pump in a higher partial pressure of oxygen so you can get work done. Sure, it's expensive. Still, it's a lot less expensive than the Concorde used to be and than supersonic travel would be if it were available today. So probably even you would choose against OP's high speed flight.
goblin89 13y ago
I'm going to apply your rule too from now on, but with different exceptions (writing this from an uncomfortable bus seat in the middle of 12-hour ride).
- SeanLuke 13y ago
  Okay, maybe buses.
goblin89 13y ago
I'm going to apply your rule too from now on, but with different exceptions (writing this from an uncomfortable bus seat in the middle of 12-hour ride).
13y ago

vpeters25 13y ago

My last sky trip from Dallas to Colorado: - 30 mins drive to airport - Another 15-30 bus from parking to terminal - 15-30 mins check-in and get through TSA. - At least 1 hr to walk to gate and wait for boarding. - 30 mins for boarding - At least another 30 mins for the plane taxing around that huge airport to reach the runway. then in Denver: - 15 mins taxing - 15 mins unboarding - 30 mins train to baggage claim and collect baggage - 30 mins bus to rental car - 1.5 hrs drive to mountain resort Total: 7.5 hrs of which only 1.5 are the actual flight (400% overhead) Driving from Dallas to Breckenridge, CO takes 13 hrs so it's still half the time, unless there are delays at the airport (Btw, my trip back took 10 hrs) Airports and planes are so huge the overhead is reaching ridiculous levels, and we are building bigger and more complex ones instead of evolving flight control technology to make flying itself easier and safer. We still use the same basic principles of flight control invented 130+ years ago, unfortunately, unless we discover a way to defeat gravity without using thrust and/or lift, this is the best we've got.

bjeanes 13y ago

> 8 vs 12 for the cost of that just isn't going to be worth it. Which makes it exactly about cost. It's not worth it for that difference. If it was 10% more would you pay it? I would. But being 5x, 10x, 20x suddenly makes it too expensive. I'd rather pay less than get there that fast.