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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

For my current flight patterns, I typically spend more time off the plane than flying. Showing up early, dropping baggage, customs/security, waiting at the gate, inefficiently loading the plane, pre-flight checks, taxiing (on/off runways), getting my baggage.

Each of those points could be much more efficient:

1.) Prescreen me for all things so that I exit the uber and walk upto the gate directly 2.) Let me print my own baggage tag at home and drop it at the gate when I arrive 3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage and take up 200 ppl's time trying to jam it into an overhead bin 4.) Dont make me sit on the plane until absolutely ready, with a runway slot ready to go 5.) When I get off the plane, hand my luggage directly to me instead of making me wander around an airport looking for a terribly slow conveyor belt to eventually get my bag

I presume all of the above doesnt happen because, at the end of the day, there aren't sufficient travelers willing to pay the cost of implementation.

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5.) When I get off the plane, hand my luggage directly to me instead of making me wander around an airport looking for a terribly slow conveyor belt to eventually get my bag

It turns out that this has been studied quite a bit. You need to walk halfway across the airport because it reduces the amount of time you eventually stand staring at the belt waiting for your bag, and most people prefer "occupied time" (e.g., walking halfway across the airport) to "unoccupied time" (e.g., waiting at a baggage claim right next to the flight).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting...

When I first came to Silicon Valley, going to LA worked like this.

- Drive to SJC. Park in lot next to terminal about 100 feet from PSA station.

- Walk into adjacent PSA terminal section. Pay $14 in cash to clerk. No reservation needed. Register receipt is boarding pass.

- The hourly B-727 pulls up outside and lowers rear stairs. Passengers get on with carry-on luggage.

- 58 minutes flight time to LAX.

SJC->LAX for $14?

Passenger screening on commercial airlines began in 1973. $14 in 1973 ~= $75 in 2016. You can get SJC -> LAX tickets on Southwest for $59 today, albeit booking in advance. The schedule is almost hourly, too. You just have to book a month out to get decent fares.

> You just have to book a month out to get decent fares.

Which is a travesty. This makes absolutely zero sense, even after Econ 500 level classes I took a decade ago. It's greed, plain and simple.

Makes plenty of sense from the airline's perspective. It's price segmentation: people who book 2 days out usually really need to get somewhere, whether it's an important business trip or a death in the family, and so they're willing to pay a lot.

It sucks from the customer perspective - in particular, if you have a sudden illness or death in a family member, the last thing on your mind should be how the airline is about to fleece you. International airlines often have bereavement fares for these situations, but US domestic carriers view it as a profit opportunity. It's often a double-whammy because your travel schedule is often unpredictable in these cases and most airline don't allow flight changes without huge penalties.

Interestingly, I've heard that plane tickets often drop significantly in price if you book really close to departure (eg. < 1 day out). Never tried it, and I don't see it in a quick spot check of the Internet, but it makes sense from an economic perspective - the seat is otherwise going to go unfilled, so any money is better than no money.

It's worth noting I know at least Delta offers "bereavement fares" and I would be surprised if the other airlines did not offer the same discounted service.

It's actually something that airlines have been phasing out. Delta's one of the last few US airlines to do this and its discount is fairly small.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/07/death_in_the_family...

At the airport closest to my house, the baggage pickup is right next to the exits to the taxi and pickup lanes. This means that I only need to carry all my stuff for a short distance to a car or shuttle rather than carrying it through the terminal. This airport has a tram system linking the building housing the ticket desks and security to the actual boarding terminal so having everyone haul their larger bags on the tram would be inefficient and just cause more headaches, especially for those travelling with children or the disabled.

Sure, but the point is you could, in theory, redesign both plane's cargo holds, and airport systems, so that the moment you get out of the plane (or within 2 min tops of docking) your bag is there in a square of the floor labeled with your name and sorted alphabetically. Of course, doing so might not be cost effective, but I bet it remains cheaper than supersonic flight.

I think it'd be pretty tough to get a plane's worth of bags from the hold to anything resembling an orderly display within 120 seconds of the first person getting off the flight. Let's assume that the collection location needs to be at least twice the wingspan of the plane. That's 400 feet for a 787, or 140 feet for a 737. There's a benefit to consistency at a given site, so let's stick with the 400-foot number. That's 90 seconds right there at typical walking speed (3 mph). So, to meet the SLA, we'd probably need to open up the entire hold, length-wise, rather than pulling out bags from one or two doors. I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but designing a door into the length of the fuselage seems like it could be on the same order of complexity as designing a plane for supersonic travel.

Let's assume that the collection location needs to be at least twice the wingspan of the plane.

Why? But in any case, you could have a fast conveyor belt directly from the plane to the location, no need to carry them by hand.

Meanwhile in the real world you have the automated baggage system that they attempted to install in Denver.

http://calleam.com/WTPF/?page_id=2086

In what theory? How would you actually go about accomplishing this? I'm sure the airlines would very much like to know how to unload a full plane's worth of cargo in 2 minutes.

they actually built systems for this but it has never been implemented. Basically you make the cargo hold completely removable from the plane. There is a box that slides in and out of the bottom of the plane. Someone just drives up with a fork lift style vehicle pops off the container and takes it inside the terminal where it can be dumped out onto the conveyor belt. I am surprised they have not automated the entire baggage system. It seems like it would be feasible to automate just about everything. You know where the plane is going to park every single time just fix that position and have something under it which can directly attach to the plane and pull the bags off and conveyor them under the ground and into the terminal and it can auto sort the bags to the right destination. It would not be easy to build but it is doable and would remove the need of large percentage of workers in the airport

Perhaps this would require bomb-bay doors on the bottom of the hold?

With small planes it basically works like this - on many of the tiny regional turboprops, your baggage is waiting by the side of the tarmac as you exit the airplane, and you pick it up before you enter the terminal, not at baggage claim.

It's mostly a problem of scale. Unloading 20 bags in the 5 minutes or so before the passengers start to deplane is no problem. Unloading 500 bags would be.

3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage

5.) When I get off the plane, hand my luggage directly to me

Maybe the idiots have more in common with you than you think?

I call them "cheap idiots" because I recognize the tragedy of the commons issue and begrudgingly pay the $25. Instead of bringing my obviously oversized carry-on up to the terminal and then being like "Oh? I didnt know, please check it for me" . Yes that makes me the "fool", but I prefer to do the thing that helps the world go in the right direction, vs doing the thing that harms everyone else to my benefit.

> 2.) Let me print my own baggage tag at home and drop it at the gate when I arrive 3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage and take up 200 ppl's time trying to jam it into an overhead bin 5.) When I get off the plane, hand my luggage directly to me instead of making me wander around an airport looking for a terribly slow conveyor belt to eventually get my bag

If you're not willing to fix 2 and 5, as well as airlines losing, misdirecting, or mishandling/damaging luggage, then you will get people like me who refuse to ever check a bag. I'd like everything I bring with me to show up, intact, and not have to wait on baggage at the other end, so I carry it with me. (I do, however, make sure it fits well within the specified carry-on dimensions, so I never have problems fitting it easily into the overhead bin.)

I don't mind gate-checked bags as much; that solves every problem except for damaged/mishandled luggage, and in particular I know I can simply pick up the bag directly from the cart on the tarmac when I get off the plane. That only tends to happen for tiny planes, though, and I don't know that it'd scale to a 400-person flight.

Personally, I'd like to see a solution that involves finer-grained boarding. Don't board a dozen rows at a time; board in outside-in order, so that everyone walks directly to the correct row, loads their luggage in parallel without blocking anyone, and sits down in parallel.

> 3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage and take up 200 ppl's time trying to jam it into an overhead bin

People with less money than you = idiots. Nice sentiment to have ????

I'd actually need to be convinced that the problem with carry-on space is people traveling on their own dime. Walking past the ticket counters in a typical airport, I see lots of luggage being checked by people who definitely aren't business travelers.

For business travelers, it's not about the money. Most of us get free checked bags because of airline status anyway. It's about time. I just wish not everyone, however able-bodied, felt compelled to use the rigid roller bags that take up so much room even for a 1 night trip.

That was my thought as well -- there are some (thankfully few) weeks where I would end up adding five to ten hours of airport wait time if I checked my bags on every flight (considering that the times I do check bags I end up waiting 30-45 minutes to get them). Checked bags to me are just a way of extending the aggravation that is modern air travel. Though I'm more than happy to hand them over in the jetway and not have to deal with overhead bins at all....

Sure, a small slice of the people on the flight cannot afford $25 each way. Most people I've observed do not, at least, appear to be that broke. I usually solve "cannot" afford issues by doing less, instead of choosing to make everyone around me suffer.

> For my current flight patterns, I typically spend more time off the plane than flying. Showing up early, dropping baggage, customs/security, waiting at the gate, inefficiently loading the plane, pre-flight checks, taxiing (on/off runways), getting my baggage.

When I was living in Beijing, I would do a few transpacific flights a year. Even Seattle was 12 hours away...

Supersonic flights make total sense for long hauls...it could make places like Australia or New Zealand "much closer" and less isolated.

Given that you are flying mainly short hauls, this isn't a feature designed for you.

Definitely agree for long hauls.

This is exactly why high speed rail is so appealing. Being able to to travel to another city at 300+ km/h with no more fanfare than getting on the metro is a fantastic experience. Sure, an aircraft flies 2-3 times faster, but the 2 hours you waste at the airport makes a train the faster option for any flight under 1 hour.

Make no mistake. The government will figure out how to ruin modern high speed rail with a bunch of bureaucracy and security theater the instant it becomes popular.

You don't have to wait 2 hours extra hours at air ports v. high speed rail. Not accounting for travel to the airport v travel to the train station, it's probably only like 30-45 minutes. You have to get to the airport 60 minutes before a domestic flight, but you have to get to amtrak 15 minutes before a trip.

Amtraks have a lot more fan fare than getting on a metro. They don't run that often and they sometimes fill up. It's much more like getting on a plane than a subway.

The time might get a little longer if you include time to get to the airport v. time to get to the station, but it's variable based on where particular people live.

> Not accounting for travel to the airport v travel to the train station

That's probably +30-60 min though. An airport is outside a city; train stations usually are scattered within a city, with one in a very centre.

This, plus airport security too

For the TGV, you need to be in the train 2 minutes before departure. Of course, you probably want to take a biffer margin of error. It's not "metro-like" but really close to commuter trains.

> 3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage

My ideal carry on baggage rules are:

- Anyone boarding with no carry on baggage has priority seat selection and boarding.

- All passengers are allowed one carry on baggage item.

- Additional carry on baggage has a $50 fee per item.

- All passengers are allowed 2 free checked bags.

- Additional checked bags have fuel offset fees.

Any airline that put this into place would immediately have all of my business the routes they operate, relevant to my travel needs.

(edit: formatting)

And no business travelers and they rapidly go bankrupt.

could you explain why no business travelers would go for this airline?

All of these problems are solved in international business class and mostly solved in domestic business. It's a question of how much you actually value these services vs the cost.

Not really; the only difference is that instead of waiting at the gate / in the aisle for people to put their bags in the bin, you're sitting in your fancy seat drinking a rum and coke. You still wait for your bag, even though it's 'priority' -- both times I've come into DCA in the last few months, it's taken like 25 minutes after I got to the carousel for it to start spinning (and my bags are one of the first ones out, but eh).

You definitely fly in comfort as a business passenger, but I wouldn't say you fly much more efficiently.

>You still wait for your bag

Not to pick on you specifically but, for a lot of people, bring less stuff. I don't use a roll-a-board for carry-on. I travel with fully legal soft-sided luggage that doesn't inflexibly take up as much space and a small computer bag. I rarely find I need to check luggage unless I'm doing activities that require sporting gear etc.

Not at all. I have a lot of friends who do this and travel. Especially in business you aren't fighting for overhead space. If you can do carry on only, you definitely should. It makes travel significantly easier.

Same, I always try to do carry-on only. TSA PreCheck helps, but the boarding process is still so inefficient. If I ran an airline, there would be a mandatory class with a test on boarding and unloading efficiently. It really bugs me how almost no one puts their bag up in the Corey orientation (they put it in with the wide side down instead of vertically, so one less bag per compartment fits). People also tend to stuff all their non-carry on stuff into the bins, which further reduces space.

Airlines are partially to blame for this behavior as well, since they rarely enforce it or even give much guidance. People also walk very slowly into the plane, struggle to lift their stuff, then realize they need something out of the pocket so they hold up everyone while they get it. I also never understood why both doors aren't used for boarding and the planes boarded middle-first.

I bet I could get the boarding time down to about 40% of what it is right now with my suggested changes. In the security lines, there are too few lanes open and too few helpers. If I opt out of the idiot scanner, it adds at least 10 minutes, sometimes 30. I've had many TSA people be incredibly rude to me when I've opted out, one yelling at me for putting my carry on in front of another person's on the undriven, too-short conveyor belt after the same person had previously instructed me to remove my bag from the belt when I informed them I was opt-out (every other time I've flown, they make you wait like an idiot while your bag and the contents of your pockets sit on the other side of the conveyor, free for anyone else to take).

The security theatre on display is also infuriating. If one wanted to, travel with someone and have them not opt out, but grab your carry-on from the other side of the scanner while you wait for them to even call for someone to think about coming over to check the elastic in your underwear for a wine opener, which if they didn't confiscate, would have obviously been used to initialize the downfall of western civilization. Meanwhile, the random checks with guns in their pants get through the blow-hard machine all the time: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/06/01/poli...

> I bet I could get the boarding time down to about 40% of what it is right now with my suggested changes.

My guess is that this is of no real benefit. Refueling, restocking, loading baggage, running maintenance checks, and other tasks need to happen before the airline can get the plane back into the air. Only extremely infrequently have I been on a plane that was able to roll back from the gate shortly after the last passenger boarded.

If the limiting factor here was passenger boarding times, airlines would have every incentive to improve the situation from where it is now. They have no incentive to speed up boarding to be any faster than the slowest of the rest of the preflight processes.

Its kind of like the model of aging (as I understood it presented by Aubrey de grey). There are many things to solve and if you dont solve them all, the first one to go gets you. No reason to board faster if you cannot do refueling faster, no reason to refuel faster if you cannot load baggage faster, no reason to load baggage faster if you cannot board faster.

I completely disagree. The separate line at check-in and through security plus early boarding to a separate cabin mean you never deal with significant wait times and you can check-in significantly closer to take off. American airports in general are bad about bags, but having your bag in the first group again gives you a huge advantage. Especially if you mix with TSA pre check.

Plus if I'm sitting in my comfortable seat drinking a rum and coke and reading a book for an extra 15 minutes, I don't really find that a particular hardship away from the noise and the throngs of people in the terminal.

>>3.) Dont let cheap idiots bring on carry on baggage and take up 200 ppl's time trying to jam it into an overhead bin

I always bring carry-on, not because I'm cheap, but because of exactly the reasons you mentioned regarding it being a pain in the ass to drop off and pick up checked in luggage.

I'm guessing the people referred to here are the ones with grossly-oversized carry on items and the type of people who bring two carry-ons which don't fit under the seats, then try to stuff them both into the bins for a few minutes before making a scene with a flight attendant who insists they gate-check one (which, IMO, shouldn't be a free service, to discourage this type of thing).

Don't know about US domestic, but world-wide both the bin sizes and the seats vary a lot. My travel suitcase usually fits in both, but sometimes it's just too big for one of them. Without standard sizes it's just going to happen.

Or loading the plane back to front, no exception, though I suppose with #3 it might not matter.

The zone system and the way most airport terminals are designed make queueing and getting on the plane a horrendous cluster fsck.

Airports remind me of legacy software in many respects: they do things the way they do because they are building on foundation of garbage processes.

Interestingly, boarding back to front appears to be the worst way to do it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgarcFkXz4

Noob :) Get TSA Pre, checkin on your phone, park your car in the exact right spot, walk directly to the security gate. Throw your two carryons on the conveyer belt and walk through the metal detector. Pick up items and walk to gate. Total time from car to gate is < 10 minutes at SFO.

In all fairness, it can be hard to predict--although I can't say I've had any real issue at SFO for a while. But because I hate to feel rushed unnecessarily, I add getting an airline club membership and chill for the extra hour or whatever that I have.

I think Boom is targeting the private-jet market. Business travelers with a private jet just show up at the general aviation terminal, say hi to the guard, walk out onto the tarmac, board the airplane, and take off. The security bullshit is for people flying commercial.

I've always said that if I could be anesthetized and stored like cargo for the entire trip, that would be preferable to me to the hurry-up-and-wait[1] status quo. I don't mind traveling, but really hate the entire airport experience these days.

[1] Too many military memories

What I want is "address to address" booking: Type in the address that I'm leaving from, and the address that I'm going to, and everything is taken care of. Things should run as smoothly as you describe.

Uber flights?

> 2.) Let me print my own baggage tag at home and drop it at the gate when I arrive

Qantas in Australia does this. If you fly often you can just order a permanent tag for your luggage. (you also get two anyway at higher FF levels)

> 5.) When I get off the plane, hand my luggage directly to me

How do you think this would work? Either the luggage or the people would have to be ordered. The way we're loading the planes and boarding, neither one is true. The carousel time is "free" for the airport, so that's the simplest solution.

>Either the luggage or the people would have to be ordered.

People come off the plane pretty close to ordered (singled door model. A machine that reads the tags could sort the luggage cause it could know what seat you're in.

That's a very good point.

3) and 5) are related. People who carry their luggage on, also get to carry it directly off as well. No wandering.

Airlines like people who carry on. It's no slower (for the airline), requires fewer ground staff, and leaves more room in the hold for paying cargo. Empty space on a plane is like fruit rotting on a supermarket shelf.

All of this already exists if you're able and willing to pay for it. Private jet rentals, charters, time shares, etc. E.g. https://www.netjets.com/Programs/Program-compare/

Pre-screening is available, see TSA Pre or Global Entry. Works really well.

This still depends significantly on the airport. At somewhere like LAX, even Global Entry and priority boarding is a far cry from "walk straight to the gate".

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