Private jet rage grows as a record number of fliers strain the system | Hacker News Reader

Private jet rage grows as a record number of fliers strain the system

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Yay record number of private jets helping out a record number of greenhouse gas emissions.

Fix the market externalities. You don't get to spew carbon into the air for free.

As someone who was 12 years old in 2006, it's baffling to me that we came so close to an effective tax on carbon so long ago, and now it's anathema to even bring it up on a national platform. The cap-and-trade system in place in California is the one thing that keeps my hope in that state alive.

They're living in the rich cousin scene in Children of Men, where they dine in front of Guernica and the rich cousin says "I just don't think about it."

Here's that scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sJO0n6kvPRU.

Sad that billions have to suffer the pollution.

ty for this weekend's movie

One of my all time favorite movies. I highly recommend it if anyone has never seen it before.

Look how much the stock market has gone up recently, or home prices, or tech profits. or anything else. more money being made than ever, more wealth than ever = more private jet demand.

I think the government policies for COVID which were supposed to help the poor backfired and made things worse. Those that didn't invest, got shafted as commodities are becoming more expensive but it won't be perfectly clear until the short-term shortage fog has receded.

Have you completely forgotten 2008-2014? That's the counterfactual.

That's known as hindsight bias and if anything, you're naively glossing over. The 2008 fiscal stimulus dwarfs COVID printing machine. Here is the actual data:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/coronavirus-leadi...

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/07/10/surprising-lev...

https://www.economist.com/img/b/600/653/90/sites/default/fil...

Keep in mind that "invested" could just mean owning a house. Those soared in value too.

In Canada, tons of people complain about how the pandemic is causing everything to soar in price and they wonder why politicians will not do anything and we just had an election where it was mostly an ignored topic.

What the non homeowners miss when they complain that the government's policies priced them out of the market is that for 65% of Canadians, the government's policies make them rich. That is why the politicians are quite happy about surging house values.

Inflation making your stuff worth more in absolute dollars is not the same as getting rich.

Houses here often went up way more than inflation. 50% to 100% increase kind of thing.

Yes because inflation is being measured as realized inflation instead of unrealized inflation.

Imagine someone in a basement printed 50% of the money supply; that unrealized inflation has happened, although consumers haven't yet seen it realized in CPI. But once that person starts spending it, it reverbates throughout the economy and becomes realized. Like potential energy in physics.

But different goods inflate at different rates. Bread will not inflate much at all as few are hindered in their bread consumption by money.

Housing will inflate much faster that the rate of money supply increase as you can always own more property. All excess money would go into property and stocks.

If you own a house and stocks, you now have lots more equity to spend, but regular consumption has not increased in price anywhere near as much.

If you don't own a house, your goal just got a lot further out of reach and your salary will not rise accordingly because the prices for consumables didn't rise much and demand did not rise much.

That's unlikely. Everyone got the same amount, but taxation which (eventually) pays for it, is progressive. Someone with no income will pay aa few % in sales taxes etc when they spend the cheque. As you go up the income ladder, others will have to cover the costs with, for example, their income tax.

People with average income will have to pay back 100% of it, which is not too easy to make investing it. At the 10% pecentile, you're expected to cover for about three people.

Tiny violins

Why tiny violins when we can use that effort to build giant guillotines?

Noblesse oblige or bust, fuckers.

This is HN, not Reddit. We don’t say stuff like that here because half of us are using private jets.

Or earnestly believe that we will be some day. Temporarily embarrassed, etc.

“Say you’ve got a client who ordered Belvedere vodka and the caterer couldn’t only get Grey Goose,” Gollan said. “So the customer gets on the plane and he’s ticked off that he’s paying all this money and saying “why didn’t I get my Belvedere vodka?’”

Here I am just wanting to not have to go through the TSA nudie scanner or fear getting put on the no-fly list if my mask slips below my nose before the drink cart comes around.

> Here I am just wanting to not have to go through the TSA nudie scanner

You can avoid that with precheck.

> or fear getting put on the no-fly list if my mask slips below my nose before the drink cart comes around.

This is definitely a real problem. It applies on private jets in most cases too, though.

There’s zero chance that someone on their private jet is wearing a mask if they don’t want to.

> zero chance that someone on their private jet is wearing a mask if they don’t want to

There is a non-zero chance that a charter (e.g. Wheels Up or Blade) will require it. That seems to be where the bulk of the new demand is coming from.

They might claim they do, on their paperwork, website, etc. But what is the reality when they're actually in the air? Do you think stewardesses on these private jets are really in the habit of making demands of their multimillionaire customers? Somehow I doubt it.

Don't know why you're being downvoted- in my experience you are 100% correct. Also, having a flight attendant on a private jet is pretty rare. It's usually 2 pilots and drinks are self-serve. Depends on the size of the jet and whether you request one, though.

> You can avoid that with precheck.

No I can't, I was born in the wrong country and therefore may never be trusted enough to fly unmolested in America.

Maybe help your country fix its issues?

> You can avoid that with precheck.

Precheck is an extremely weird product. If the TSA checks actually had any safety impact, trying to bribe your way around them should be the biggest red flag there is. Instead, precheck is expressly allowed and actively advertised. Precheck is nothing more than the TSA letting you pay your way out of a problem that it created.

Your background gets checked as part of getting precheck. Not everyone can get it just because they can afford the fee. And it doesn't let you skip security completely; it just lets you go through a metal detector instead of a body scanner.

There are other benefits: typically shorter line, don't have to remove shoes, don't have to unload laptop into bins, sense of superiority, etc.

I was surprised by this when I went in for my Precheck appointment soon after the program started. I had made room in my schedule for an hour or so, and was horrified when the entire interview was just a TSA employee taking my picture. I don't really understand what the utility could be beyond revenue and getting ahead of constituent pressure from people rich enough to make some noise about how useless the TSA is.

It wasn't just that interview. A background check happened behind the scenes.

I’m sure it did, but at that point why not automatically grant it to every citizen who can pass a background check?

Because it takes time and resources to do the background checks.

The truly hilarious thing about PreCheck is that you don't even need it. Just give the airline a little extra money and you get access to the PreCheck line with no questions asked. I guess I'm glad they dispensed with the pretext, but... what?

You're thinking of first class screening, which is not precheck. It's just a dedicated lane with a shorter line. You're subject to exactly the same checks as regular passengers.

>This is definitely a real problem. It applies on private jets in most cases too, though.

I just flew on a private jet for the first time in August. All the paperwork and whatnot said masks were required but we never wore one from the second we walked out onto the tarmac. Nobody batted an eye. Even the pilots had theirs down below the chin while flying. I asked and they said 80%+ of their customers did not want to wear a mask, so they didn't push the topic.

Precheck... Sure feels like a protection racket. It also feels like an easy thing for a terrorist to take advantage of

Well to be fair a private jet flight is 2K to 10K per flight hour to use, so I think they're entitled to somewhat higher expectations than the average flier.

What changed in society that it's now considered unfair if you can get something better by paying extra? Isn't the whole point of money that you can get stuff by spending it?

Ehhhh the extreme concentration of wealth in the minority?

That said, it should be forbidden to emit this volume of emissions for the sake of so few people.

I upvoted you. The ultrarich that make guidelines for ordinary people (TSA, masks) often themselves have no first hand experience with the practical consequences of said rules. When did Pelosi or her employers like Gettys fly commercial last?

Just one moment.

The TSA is an artifact of Dubya, both as a specific act and as a result of TWOT.

And hey, TWOT itself is a reaction to a terrorist attack that occurred under Dubya's watch and about which he was forewarned and about which he declined to act.

He then made fear a pillar of his re-election, a thoroughly right-wing playbook. He made the TSA an identity politics issue. Dubya strong!

The next republican government your deluded nation enjoyed was characterised by a Golfer-in-Chief burning as much aviation fuel as he could to pump his tacky resorts and to show off his bum in golf trousers.

And you pick NANCY PELOSI as your exemplar?

Always baffles me. HN has such ferocious intelligence, encyclopaedic knowledge, and fatheaded right-wing chump nuggets.

I thought we had global warming?

How else are they going to go see Greta speak?

Greta travels by boat. If only more people were internally consistent as her.

Unless it's by sail-boat, I don't think the emissions per passenger mile of a boat is better than an airplane.

If you cross an ocean on a sailboat, either putting your life or the life of your crew on hold for days, are you still using resources in the best way? If I own a business that employs a bunch of people, am I better off taking time out from running it to sail somewhere so I can save the transportation emissions, instead of focusing my time on helping all those people be productive? People already choose transportation based on how their time can be used most efficiently. Maybe you could argue that wastrel bitcoin playboys or whatever should travel by sailboat, but the for the majority of people, even a sailboat is a pretend 0th order win that neglects any other effects of that travel choice.

You're right. Use Zoom instead.

The breakfast at Cheval Blanc Courchevel just didn’t feel the same over a Zoom call.

The referenced travel by Greta was in a sailboat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_Greta_Thunberg

Probably not practical for most though.

Greta travels by boat then 5 person crew flies to take the boat back home…

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/cre...

As has always been the case I think, common plebs are expected to sacrifice so the elite can continue their lives of luxury.

Shut up and eat your bugs, pleb.

I've so far failed to understand why aircraft get singled out when it comes to climate change. They produce something like 3.5% of global emissions, but they definitely get more than 3.5% of global attention.

Please do convince me though. I'd like to understand.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I've been in the aviation industry and sort of still am.)

Visbility of both them and the alternatives (and perhaps the people and uses). Compare that to say bunker fuel in the cargo ships. We don't see the ships, we don't understand the fuel, I would struggle to name an alternative propulsion better than something in early research like those spinning 'sails'.

I think it's an optical problem since the emissions of private aviation are so massive and there is an easy alternative (just fly commercial first class). There is little sympathy for this.

Heating my small apartment is not an optical problem: If I don't heat it in the winter, I might actually die, there is no alternative for me, and the emissions are not that big. Everyone can have sympathy for that.

I may get in trouble for this but it's funny how what is effectively attempted wealth redistribution - I mean massive money printing and deficit spending - is actually having the opposite effect of creating massive inequality, where there are now all kinds or people for whom money is basically nothing, while there are others who still make basically what they did in the 90s. That is why I'm not a socialist, not because I don't believe in equality, but because government overreach always makes inequality worse.

18 months of a small amount of cash is not a meaningful attempt at wealth redistribution.

And even that small amount was able to spur massive inequality. Or are you making the "we've never tried true communism" argument?

How is that "a small amount of cash"? I see comparisons all the time here on how absurdly high the net worth of Jeff Bezos is, but taking all of it wouldn't have even covered just the first round of the stimulus checks.

Jeff bezos’ net worth is a number that gets divided into 1

The stimulus program is divided into several hundred million and intended to help all of them

Just because they are both numbers representing money doesn’t mean they are comparable

People making less than $75000 a year received a grand total of $3000 over 18 months. Some of them received a few thousand in supplemantary unemployment benefits - during a period when they were not working. No, this isn't a huge amount of money for any person, certainly not anything that makes any microscopic dent in addressing inequality. That wasn't the point of the program.

No, but the net worth of the top 1.5 % could cover the first round of the stimulus checks 10 times over: https://www.statista.com/statistics/300482/us-high-net-worth...

Keep in mind that 1.5% is 5 million people, and that we've done a lot more than just the first round of the stimulus checks.

One guy couldn't cover 300 million stimulus checks? Amazing!

I think you misunderstood the point of all that spending. The goal was to keep things operating as they where not to somehow increase equality.

Most people got a trivial amount of cash just enough to limp through the worst of it often much worse than they started. Anyone that kept their job where basically forced to save as restaurants etc shut down. That’s what boosted the stock market, a giant influx of cash from regular people.

That wasn't an attempt at wealth distribution lol. The Federal Reserve's corporate bond buying program was always to be bigger than stimulus checks and payment protection program. I was more so amused how PPP got all the headlines and watched neighbors turn on each other, while the corporate bond issuers move in silence.

It was in the CARES Act of 2020 and watching the corporate bond market closely, it's just a matter of reading comprehension.

They squirm and recoil when you reveal the true plan. Careful.

Inequality in the US is far worse than any comparable country, i. e. Western Europe, Canada, NZ, etc. All those countries have higher taxes and would be considered to be more actively involved in the economy. Here’s a nice chart: https://images.app.goo.gl/WpcWjHghC5XTmYKn6.

It shows, among other things, that besides being too small overall, US tax policy does nothing to reduce inequality. That’s because it has seized to be a typical progressive tax regime.

Instead, the top 1 % pay lower rates than the middle class. And the top 0.1 %, in turn, pay less than the 1 %: https://images.app.goo.gl/seh6KtpZ2GbQcH2AA

None of those countries is socialist, by the way. The closest is probably East Germany until 1990.

'Overreach' can only be defined in relative terms.

Since this is YCombinator we should be talking about all the private jet startups that are exacerbating this. They have made flying private a lot more affordable!

Private jets could be confiscated by the state and drafted into a national airline aeroflot style.

They could be used to transfer politicians or be given to the military.

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