Hacker News Reader

Comment by smachiz | Hacker News Reader

Feels like a losing battle against physics, combined with it only being really valuable in a single direction.

Overnight flights from east coast to EU are late enough that they don't impact productive time, and largely get in early enough for a full day of work.

Making that flight shorter - as anyone who's done a DEN-NYC redeye will tell you - doesn't actually help productivity.

Sure, on the return flight, it would be great to shave a couple hours off, but on the way there, with the time changes required, faster doesn't so much help with productivity. Especially with inflight internet these days.

View on HN

> they don't impact productive time

Even flying in first class I’m sure I’d get there much more refreshed for a short four hour flight than an eight hour one, improving my productivity when I get there.

And why are you only considering overnight flights?

I think focusing on longer flights will have a bigger benefit. Most of the time in a short flight is already taken up by getting to, being processed through, and waiting in the airport.

I also think it is common to have most long haul flights 6hr+ overnight.

Regarding Concorde and from a customer's business perspective, going west (from Paris or London to NYC) made sense as you'd pretty much land before you took off (in local time). So you'd gain time.

For instance you'd leave Paris at 10:30am and you'd land at JFK at 8:25am or so. But on the way back, you'd take-off from JFK at 8am to land at 5:45pm... To/From London would be 10:30am/09:25am and 8:30am/17:25pm.

Bottom line, going west is sweet as you get a full day ahead of you. But going east doesn't get you anything but going there faster.

That's why Concorde was often carrying more passengers on the way west than on the way back: people would choose to get a first class overnight flight...

That said, if they could solve the cost issue, I'd rather fly for less time, even if I still lost a day of productivity going east.

as an aside, I don't understand how people can fly several hours on a commercial airline and then just start their day as if it didn't happen. I need at least a full 24hr cycle involving sleep in a real bed to get back to 100%.

> I don't understand how people can fly several hours on a commercial airline

Flying in first, not drinking a ton of free alcohol, and showering at the arrivals lounge.

Yup, sleep well and have a shower right before landing. Rather easy (depending on the route), but could be expensive depending on how valuable your time is.

Doesn’t even always have to be first, lots of airlines have excellent product in biz too.

Honestly I think a lot are struggling to stay awake and just use a ton of caffeine to mask it. Certainly I've seen some execs whose brains just weren't there thinking they were fine to do SFO->DUB and start meetings.

It's mainly about routine. Given time and repetition people will get used to almost anything.

The anxiety surrounding travel is what makes it exhausting. Once you are used to it, it fades into the background as a well optimized habit. It's like your work commute where you are just on autopilot and don't really think about it.

Ultimately it becomes a few hours to yourself to just read, sleep, or get caught up.

Red-eyes are tough though it's not too bad in international business. I'm usually operating at about half speed when I overnight to continental Europe from the US East Coast.

On the other hand, flying cross-country on an early morning flight to SFO, I can pretty much be ready for a regular day when I land.

> The anxiety surrounding travel is what makes it exhausting.

That is actually a really good insight. I mean reading it, it seems obvious, it's just that I never realised it.

> That's why Concorde was often carrying more passengers on the way west than on the way back: people would choose to get a first class overnight flight...

So in a fully realized 1960ies space age utopia you'd have a fleet of supersonics circling the planet hub to hub slightly ahead of the dawn line and a fleet of saloon cruisers going the opposite direction. Instead we got mobile internet.

That's another thing you're right about: decades a go, working remotely wasn't really a thing... So all the business value of being able to get somewhere quickly makes a lot less sense now as you can video chat with people anytime, anywhere pretty much.

Timezones. 6PM in NYC is midnight in Paris. Leave the office at 3PM and get to Paris at Midnight? Lost half a day leaving, still not getting into a hotel until 1AM best case.

Leave NYC supersonic at 9PM, get to paris at 6AM, great, I might've been able to sleep 1h.

On a normal plane I can leave NYC at 6PM, get to Paris at 8AM, and hopefully have gotten to sleep for 3-4h.

This also doesn't account for block padding - busy destinations and origins are busy. JFK-CDG is blocked at ~7.5h, at least 45m of that time is for padding departure/taxiing/landing slots in JFK and CDG.

Doubling the speed of the middle leg is not the same as halving trip length.

My dad once told me he got upgraded to the Concorde on NY-LHR once. Aside from having the experience, he said it wasn't really a win. As he put it, with the regular first class, he got a nice meal on the plane and got into London in time for bed. With the Concorde, he got in in time for rush hour and had to immediately go out to dinner.

Yeah, for sure. You still burned your whole day and nothing but pain to show for it.

Still wish I got to fly it though!

Sounds like you only fly first class. Have you ever flown 10+ hours in economy and felt ready for work (or even vacation) stepping off the plane?

This will be a private jet, and they are pretty expensive. Apparently flying in a Bombardier Learjet costs something like $7000/hour [1], while a first-class ticket is more like $1000/hour.

[1] https://www.aircharterserviceusa.com/about-us/news-features/...

> while a first-class ticket is more like $1000/hour.

I usually pay like 160eur/hour for top tier F products like the Emirates A380.

I just paid a little over 4000 euros for a 32h round trip with that particular offering. I don’t chase after deals, I just tend to depart from a city without many F pax.

Of course, YMMV.

This doesn't seem possible - I have never seen first tickets that cheap from anywhere to anywhere. Can you provide a few example routes?

Most Emirates long haul flights departing from AMS,BCN or MXP seem to be that cheap, I'm sure there are other cheap airports but I'm too lazy to look. This is probably the case with all the euro airports that don't charge super high fees and lack large quantities of F pax.

I'm seeing MXP-HKG at 4000eur for a round trip, MXP-BKK for 3800eur. There are probably even better deals available if departing from some third world countries.

I guess you're from the UK, I'm seeing BHX-HKG priced at around 151GBP/hr. Shockingly, LHR-HKG looks even cheaper at somewhere around 100GBP/hr.

I think you’re seeing corona virus at work. Those F tix are usually more from what I’ve seen.

I was paying those prices last year. Only the LHR rates there seem highly unusual.

It sucks, but I've done it and do it. Unfortunately sometimes you just have to.

But these are maybe around 10h max flights - given the range of ~4000-4500 miles. So you're still on a plane for ~5 hours.

But you still have the same issues with time zones. If you need a lot of time to adjust to a new time zone, you were always flying in way earlier - so whether your flight is 5 hours or 10 doesn't really matter much.

You were never going to red-eye in for a morning meeting in London or Paris either way.

I wouldn't be surprised if economy class on this future supersonic jet costs the same as first class (or at least business class) on a traditional jet.

Though either way, even after a 9 hour business class flight, I'm certainly not ready to go to work when I get there even though I had a lay-flat seat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com