what? Tegel was the best airport ever, you could literally be there 20min before check-in and still get your plane. Nowadays I have to arrive 3-4hrs before, tegel was a blessing a true king of all airports, all hail tegel
I flew through Tegel a dosen times and it was a horrible experience each time. Not sure which was worse - the old terminal, or the new barrack added on to the first one.
Also, I've seen multiple airports that allowed you to be 20 min before boarding and still get through. On Warsaw Chopin, which is 2x bigger than Tagel, I can arrive 10 min before boarding and still make it on time. With most airports the size of Tagel as well.
Having said all that - the architecture was nice indeed, and I'm sure it was very functional when it was built and there was 4x less traffic, planes were 30% smaller and the security was way lighter.
Schonefeld was better, though getting there involved taking Ryanair…
(Honestly, I expect Tegel was pretty good for Schengen traffic).
Fast in and out, even with the X10 bus connection.
The main terminal was weirdly narrow on airside, but from memory apart from having to stand to drink beer was just fine.
I liked the currywurst carriage outside by departures if I was ever more than 30 minutes early for my flight.
Schönefeld on the other hand … grr. I argue that that airport was exceptionally poor in a way I’ve never experienced outside of corporate airports used for industrial and mining facilities.
This is true many places, although I tend to show with a tighter timetable myself.
But it's so absurd, so silly. It's actually faster to drive from Ottawa to Toronto(4 to 5 hr drive) than take a plane, and cheaper.. even with current fuel costs, too.
What a way to ruin a mode of travel.
A propeller plane shines here. If boarding is quick, and there is no customs as it is in country, and you just carry on? You save time, and it's better than 20 to 50 people driving independantly.
A plane can also fly straight too, so it can take even 1/3 of the time to get there.
Which is why boarding slow downs are so sad.
The train brings you in the middle of both city center, directly integrated with transit, you can show up about 10 min before your departure, etc. It’s just the actual rail that is the problem.
On a personal note, I also hate bus travel with a passion — it's mind-numbingly slow, you have limited ability to move around, it's sometimes too cramped to work, when toilets are available they're tiny and awful, etc. I love train travel and will use trains whenever available, sometimes even for multi-day journeys, but I will take significant detours or even rearrange travel plans to avoid a bus.
Also, let's not forget that the experience of traveling by bus got worse mostly because of the popularization of low-cost short-haul flights, and that has killed the market for "premium" bus traveling. If short-haul flights were out of the picture, I wouldn't be surprised if someone started offering bus travel with larger seats (in 2-1 configuration) and even more sleeper buses for night travels [0]
Depends which class you travel, and with which airline. Even in economy, the "legacy" European carriers are generally more comfortable than a bus. The ability to pay more to make the travel bearable is an advantage of air travel.
> Also, let's not forget that the experience of traveling by bus got worse mostly because of the popularization of low-cost short-haul flights, and that has killed the market for "premium" bus traveling. If short-haul flights were out of the picture, I wouldn't be surprised if someone started offering bus travel with larger seats (in 2-1 configuration) and even more sleeper buses for night travels.
You're right that air travel has made premium buses moot, but I think that's a good thing. Spending 12+ hours on a bus is not an improvement over a 2 hour flight, even if you have a bed on the bus. You can spend the night in your own bed and then get to the destination at the same time, having slept better and with less risk of accidental injury. The emissions gap between the two modes is narrowing rapidly, too.
My argument is that there is no such thing as a 2-hour flight. We still need to factor the time to get to the airport, check-in/boarding, getting off the plane, waiting for luggage, and then getting from the airport to your actual destination. That easily transforms any trip into a 5- or 6-hour event.
Factor in that if you are flying to a place where you need a hotel to "sleep on your own bed", suddenly even a very luxurious night bus might come out ahead in price and practicality.
Granted, for an European context it makes a lot less sense to talk about intercity bus because we have a reasonably extensive rail network. But put your hate of buses aside for a moment and consider that buses can be better, so from a North American perspective it can make sense to consider it.
In all seriousness though, any country serious about climate change should ban short-haul flights.
And certainly far, far slower than a plane could be, with no hours of pre-flight waiting.
More comfortable than a plane, with its cramped seating, for sure.
Really, a prop plane is not horrible for the environment, especially compared to cars.
Yet before we get into that, you should realise what you've done. This whole thread was just about how sad these exessive delays are.
Now I have no problem with diverging threads, my initial comment did just that!
However, you're definitely talking about "where you think we should be" vs "right now".
And right now, you're saying all short hop flights should be banned.
Yet as many have indicated here, that is just not feasable in some cases. Even if you believe rail is always better (it isn't, not for all flights compared to all rail), you actually need rail before banning short hops.
And as others have indicated, loads of people driving, instead of short prop plane hops, is worse than that plane ride by far!
Is your goal to harm the environment? If not, then "just ban it" isn't sensible. You need to plan first.
And really, just ban it means you support just banning all cars, the concept is the same, yet this is literally impossible for many, many reasons.
For example, banning all cars would mean an end to rural livability, and a further exodus from rural Canada.
Canada, whos crops and meat feed massive parts of the world.
Are you planning to force people to farm? Make them stay, and work, if they are entirely isolated without cars?
Of not that, then is your goal to cause world wars, and death, and destruction, and likely the release of tailored plagues, and nuclear weapons?
Because in a world pf starvarion, the knives come out very fast and strong.
Yet this is what wide sweeping car bans could mean, as it is already hard to keep farms manned, and profitable, without banning things from a city centric view.
Would you also ban short hops for prop planes, from rural areas too?
It would be a disaster to put trains everywhere. Literallly bad for the environment, to run a rail line for 50 people a day. A prop plane is far, far more energy efficient, than maintaining all that rail infrastructure for so few people, through hundreds of km of forest.
Just the regular chainsaw usage alone, to prune back trees, makes it worse.
What are you thinking?? Hurting the environment like this, suggesting policies which end in plague, nuclear war, death, destruction!!
Think of the whole cost, or you may kill us all!!
Nice try at argumentum ad absurdum, though...
My argument has some merit, just look at Sri Lanka!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/world/asia/sri-lanka-orga...
The connection is more direct for them, but some say that all we did, with environmental targets and oil, was to outsource it all to crazy Putin.
He now uses that cash to slaughter and kill. And may yet, as a result, bring about a world war.
That is a real, direct outcome of a positive environmental policy(reduce production), causing mayhem, death, destruction.
Of course, bad things often happen regardless. I admit to this, yet, I feel short sightedness got us into these environmental issues, and trying to get us out must not make the same mistake.
We must play the long game.
No one is saying that we should "reduce production". Of course, any ban on short-haul flight could only be enacted after there was a better/cheaper infrastructure available.
And it so happens that for a lot of cases, the infrastructure exists, it is mostly a matter of ending up with subsidizes and ensuring that government policy accounts for all externalities. For North America, even if proper rail does not exist yet, intercity buses usually are a feasible alternative, and they also have no-to-little waiting times, they can also drop passengers at the city center and are more fuel-efficient per person than flying or driving solo.
It makes no sense to have flights between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, much like it makes no sense to have flights between Boston/NYC, LA/SF/Las Vegas, Seattle/Vancouver. And this is just off the top of my head.
So to realistically do this, you need fast and cheap rail. No one is going to take rail, which stops at 10+ stops, and takes 7 hours for the trip.
Right now, Ottawa->Toronto isn't too bad, compared to car. Schedule says 4 1/2 to 5 hours.
Yet, you have to get to the rail station, and get from the rail station at each end.
Were I to visit my uncle in Toronto, this means a 30 minute drive to the station, and a cab to my uncle's house, another 30+ minutes.
A car removes some of this, and removes the waiting at each end. And if you drive, you don't need to rent a car, it is more convenient at the other end.
So to compete realistically, to get many people who would drive, to use the train, you need incentive. Not punishment, incentive.
So high speed rail would be good here.
This means loads of infrastructure must be build, which means you must ensure success. This means it has better not be more expensive than a car, and if you and your wife, or family are travelling, this means 10 bucks, maybe 20 per person.
Otherwise a car is far, far cheaper. Current ticket costs are silly.
Now I agree, train is better than car. But is train better than car, or plane, if it costs a gazillion to build, and maintain, and it is barely used?
And yet you're also talking about Seattle/Vancouver, in comparison to SF/LA or Vegas, where the plane is much, much faster than rail or car. So much faster.
So it has better really be fast rail here.
Yet have you looked at the fuel efficiency of fast rail? It is not as good as you think.
And the bus! Let's replace a personal car, with a hot, smelly, loud, uncomfortable bus which most people hate.
You.must be joking.
If you think the only metrix is the environment, you will 100% fail at enacting change.
I will give you another counter example here.
Dams.
For the longest time, environmentalists complained about dams. Lost habitat, they said. And yes, it is true!
Yet compared to anything, anything at all, a dam is best for the environment. Better than nuclear, solar, wind, anything!
And it is is not as if the environment is destroyed, just altered. Some animals go away, to be replaced by different wildlife.
For god sakes, beavers make lakes and dams which can be seen from space!
It is another example of short sightedness. We must enact change in a way that it takes hold, and desired.
Not if takes at least 45 minutes to get to the airport, plus 1-2 hours waiting to board, plus 20-30 minutes to leave the plane and yet another 45 minutes to get to your destination. The 1-hour flight just became a 4-5 hour journey, full of stress and discomfort.
> I will give you another counter example here. Dams.
That's the third strike at Chewbacca defense. I'm really done here.
I flew through the new Berlin airport 2 times this week, and had no issues going through security and to the gates. That 3-4hrs in your case seems absurdly long - were there crazy lines at the checkin or sth?