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Comment by p0wn | Hacker News Reader

Flying sucks. Flights are always packed and the seats are too close together for comfort. I wonder if a plane was packed with all first class seats how expensive the tickets would be.

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I would love if blimp travel would come back, so long as you get more personal space. A modern airship could make the transatlantic trip in about 24-36 hours, so it doesn't really matter for casual vacation travel. It would be quite relaxing, just floating across the ocean with a nice cup of tea and a good book in a small but cozy cabin.

Once the "fastest possible" is broken zeppelin travel offers significant energy savings - it can ride the Gulf Stream and spend most of the actual energy positioning itself correctly there. They could even be designed as sails to catch more.

I thought the Gulf Stream only traveled west to east, but I’m sure there are other prevailing winds that blimps could take advantage of if they were designed to use them? I honestly have never thought about this before, so thanks for that food for thought.

How much faster could blimps travel in these air currents?

The currents average something like 70 mph so it adds that to the speed.

A zeppelin properly built could be jet powered and travel quite fast, but a sailing zeppelin could do 60-70 “for free” probably. If it could get high enough.

And the air has to get back somehow or the Gulf Stream would fill Europe with air and North America would run out.

... and now I'm gonna go read Kenneth Oppel's Airborn, which if you haven't read, you should

>A modern airship could make the transatlantic trip in about 24-36 hours, so it doesn't really matter for casual vacation travel

How many vacation days do you guys get per year?!? Only retired people would find it acceptable to turn an entire day wasted on travel to Europe into a 3 days waste (times two if you plan on coming back).

Unlike cruise ship, they can't fill the airship with fun activities. That travel will be just as boring as a car or train ride.

I've done a long train trip from Shanghai to Urumuqi was that 2 and a half days (this is in the time before HSR). People definitely do it, this was during CNY as well.

Double, more or less, if the sole requirement was to have the same revenue per flight for a full plane. E.g. a small short haul aircraft with, say, 35 rows of economy class (six across) would end up with 30 rows of first class (four across). That cuts capacity by about half.

But some people will pay more for comfort. And most regular people are incredibly price sensitive, they'll suffer quite a lot just to save even 10 bucks on an airline ticket, so your hypothetical airline doing this strategy went bankrupt.

I used to fly a route from London City to JFK (with a stopover in Shannon) and a similar route from Newark to Singapore. Both were competitively priced with the business class seats on the 3 class birds on similar routes. In the case of the former, it was much slower than the larger jets, so I assume that put downward pressure on the flight price. For the Newark flight, I think the departing airport being Newark also helped contribute to slightly lower fares than say if it was JFK to SIN.

Having worked in the industry previously, I’m not sure there are many city pairs where all business works but carriers such as La Compagnie have made it work for at least stretches at a time.

> I wonder if a plane was packed with all first class seats how expensive the tickets would be.

It's pretty normal to have all lie-flat business/first-class flights between major business centres such as New York and London. You wouldn't know about them unless you were booking a first-class ticket in the first place, so they're not very visible.

I think the prices are the same as normal? Otherwise nobody would use them, of course.

JSX (formerly JetSuiteX) does something in this vein over a pretty limited route map in the US for ~2-4x the price. It's not like international first class with beds in suites, but it's considerably roomier than domestic premium seats and it comes with some other perks like flying out of private terminals.

There are airlines that do this, and some have been pretty competitively priced vs F on the majors. Here's one I've enjoyed: https://www.lacompagnie.com/

Here is a good analysis of why the situation will never improve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll92ud6Nufw

I think business class only flights exist for trans Atlantic flights (well, just one biz-only airline left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class_airline). Definitely the Concord was single luxury class, but it was cramped (acceptable due to its speed).

A business class only plane would have ticket prices equivalent to business class tickets on a normal flight.

The problem with this strategy is that there are only a small number of people willing to pay 10x more for first class. If every seat was first class airlines would have to charge much less for the first class experience and so the formerly first class passengers would be spending much less.

That experiment existed, it was called the Concorde

I just visited the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where they have one of the old Concordes. I was struck by how tight and un-luxurious the cabin felt. I have only flown business/first class once, but it was definitely a lot nicer than the seats on the model I walked through.

It was more cramped because the flight only lasted 3.5 hours (NYC to Paris), you didn't need lie flat seats on a trans Atlantic flight that could go so quickly, in theory at least.

Also, when did Seattle flight museum get a Concorde? Its been a couple of years for me, but I'm surprised they have one. Looking on the website, it is outside...maybe we just missed it somehow?

Yeah, it’s out in the yard with the 747, dreamliner, etc. not sure when they picked it up, but it’s very cool! I suppose it could be a replica, but I’d be surprised if it was. It’s the full deal with cockpit and instruments, engines, gear, etc.

they're not if you're willing to pay extra for comfort

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