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Comment by jwcacces | Hacker News Reader

Flying used to be like this. I'm from Long Island and I went to college in the Boston area. I remember you could buy a book of delta shuttle tickets (~$100 / fight, book of 5) and show up and use them whenever you'd like, last minute, with no security hassle or whatever. You could also use the same tickets to go to DC if you wanted. Just stay on the plane for the next leg.

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Nod. Pre-9/11 peak deregulation had $40 flights BOS-NYC. I'd run from Boston subway, to a quick direct shuttle bus, then through the doors, across the small lobby, with staff yelling at me... "Run faster!" they'd shout, mostly with a smile. Down the ramp without stopping, sliding through the closing aircraft door. Flight attendants later walking the rows, collecting two twenties from everyone. Here in a multiply dystopian future... sigh.

A belated caveat: I find myself now uncertain - it might have been three twenties, $60? Wasn't four.

Pre-Acela and the electrification of the line north of New Haven that came with it, the only real reason you'd take the train from Boston to NY (much less points south) was to save money. When I was in school in the Boston area, when I went home to the Philadelphia area, I'd take the train for longer vacations but would fly for 4-day weekends.

Arriving at Penn Station has benefits if you're traveling for business. Hailing a ride to get to an office within 15 minutes beats the long ride to get downtown from one of the NYC airports.

Yeah, none of the NYC airports are particularly convenient. And I'm actually usually in midtown, often on the west side, so I can just walk from Penn to my hotel. (And Penn may actually stop being its dingy self one of these days.)

> (And Penn may actually stop being its dingy self one of these days.)

That's kind of already happened. The Moynihan Train Hall just opened up recently. I checked it out recently and it's quite nice, certainly much nicer than the old Penn Station. The next time you're getting off in NYC, walk towards the back of the train you came in on and then go up to the surface, and you'll be exiting in Moynihan instead of Penn.

I haven't been in NYC for close to a couple years at this point. Some of the renovation work around the LIRR entrances was done but not anything else. I'll definitely check out next time I'm there. The drawings for the continuing renovation look quite nice too.

I kind of wish I wasn't contributing to the topic tangent/hijack, but whatever...

Hawaii's interisland flights probably most closely resemble this air travel experience. Aside from Sunday & Friday fares that have a $30 premium due to work-week commuters, currently current week tickets are $49 and next week and beyond tickets are $39. And if you want to believe that's just a covid effect, there was a $29 special going last year right before covid.

Pair the process with chill, small-ish airports* and the hassle of flying is about as low as it gets for controlled commercial air travel.

Years ago, it used to be the norm to Judy show up 10 or 15 minutes before the flight.

* Obviously Honolulu is an exception, but it does have a separate interisland terminal.

Now that we're finally pulling out of Afghanistan and done with the War on Terror, it's time to disband DHS / TSA and put things back to how they used to be.

I think it's kinda weird how very few politicians are talking about this.

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