Hacker News Reader

Comment by noirbot | Hacker News Reader

I would be curious to compare to the 90s though. I remember when I was younger, I'd sometimes just go to the airport back when you could just walk out to the gates, grab a snack and then watch the planes take off and land.

Obviously that's not a "normal" thing to have done, but in a world with lighter security, I remember airport food being around the same level as mall food court options, so it was an interesting option for getting out of the house. I'd be curious if there's some lower-security path towards making Airports more of a common space, not that there's any chance of it happening.

View on HN

In the early 1990s I was very late for a flight. My friend dropped me off at the departure area; I got out of the car 5 minutes before departure time.

I ran through the airport to security, let them know what flight I was on, and then ran to the gate after walking through the metal detector fully clothed and sending my bag through x-ray. Security radioed the gate and the flight crew left the door open so I could board. I made it, took my seat and buckled in, they closed the door and the plane pushed back. Elapsed time car seat to plane seat was about 7 minutes. Every single person I interacted with was helpful and understanding.

What strikes me today is that EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT FLYING SUCKS. Airports are just part of the problem.

I know this sounds extreme but they need to deregulate and privatize every single thing about the airline industry.

Government just needs to ensure that liability flows in part to executives and board members regardless of corporate structure.

Airlines can form a consortium to operate ATC themselves and can modernize it; something the government is completely failing at.

A modern ATC would let us break away from the hub model that gives airports so much power.

And your sandwich will be cheaper at an airport closer to your destination where you didn’t have to wait an hour for security to feel you up and take naked pictures of you.

I don’t know where your faith that deregulating and privatizing would help the experience comes from. Here in Europe once they privatized parts of rail travel the experience got markedly worse. I moved to Europe about 20 years ago and it used to be much more of a pleasure taking trains with the EU (mostly talking about long range international trains within Central Europe) even not that long ago.

Specifically in Germany the experience seems to have only gotten worse (both with quality of service and punctuality).

True. It's a false idea that privatisation improves anything. Most private good and services are better because of competition, not because of the ownership.

If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good. When it means a limited number of suppliers chosen by an authority, it's almost always worse.

> If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good.

Not always. Often when this happens, it's just a race to the bottom.

Partial privatization is often (always?) worse than no privatization.

Privatization works only because of market incentives. When you take away some of those incentives then you have the illusion of a free market but free market controls cannot encourage good outcomes.

>True. It's a false idea that privatisation improves anything. Most private good and services are better because of competition, not because of the ownership.

Absolutely. So let's have competition with multiple private contractors at every airport, paid by the number of passengers who choose to use a particular contractor to go through security.

That would solve every problem, as the market will optimize for maximum passenger satisfaction at security checkpoints, especially if they can get more people through faster.

What could go wrong? /s

Privatisation has nothing to offer if there is no competition.

If there is no competition possible--and there are so many other situations apart from airport security--then a publicly owned provider is better. There _are_ some things that are a natural monopoly but if there must be a monopoly then it should be a government one.

A private monopoly is the worst of all worlds.

Poe's law[0] strikes again!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

I know you’re being sarcastic but you’re inadvertently correct.

Very quickly “no security airlines” would go out of business as no one would want to risk their life needlessly, especially if the lack of security led to an incident.

However an airline that used nonintrusive, convenient methods for security, fmight find a loyal passenger following.

>I know you’re being sarcastic but you’re inadvertently correct.

I don't think so, as you seem to have misunderstood my "bright idea."

It's not airlines I was talking about. They'd have nothing to do with it. Just as they have zero to do with security checkpoint screening now. Rather, it's multiple, private replacements for TSA, each of which would serve all the airlines/gates at an airport.

What's more, even before the TSA existed, the airlines didn't do the screening. It was a private security contractor hired by the airport.

It's, as you correctly imply, all about incentives.

In my "scenario" these hypothetical "competitive private replacement" security screeners are paid by the numbers of bodies it passes through.

And so I'll ask my sarcastic question again. This time specifically to you:

What could possibly go wrong?

Edit: Clarified prose.

FWIW, in the US an airport doesn't actually have to use the TSA: the government can't actually quite mandate a single vendor like that here; there thereby exist private companies that operate to the TSA specification, and an airport can go with one of them instead. The airport in San Francisco (SFO) is the only one I have ever seen do this, using a vendor named CAS... and while the experience is mandated to suck a lot, it still sucks a lot less than the TSA as the CAS employees seem to get that they are just security technicians, not officers of the state (a distinction the TSA people don't understand, but also applies to them: the police at the airport, for example, have lots of jurisdiction over them, as far as I understand).

I don’t understand though, why upon learning the government does something poorly the first reaction would be to replace it with private contractors rather than demand your government does better? Some things are public services and shouldn’t be profit motivated.

Because it's generally been borderline impossible to force a large national government to do something better. It's legitimately easier a lot of the time to force a multinational corporation to change than the government.

Since the TSA is generally a federally controlled agency, you'd have to elect a majority of the House/Senate/Executive to change policy there to make it better, and literally no one will run for those offices with even a minor part of their platform being improving the TSA. Even if they had a position you liked about airport security, would you be willing to look past a difference on something like gun laws or school funding or environmental issues to vote for someone who was going to make the TSA more effective? If your answer is no, that's why people have no real hope that the government would improve the TSA.

Which only tells you that the issues with TSA are not politicized (in general). Which is a good thing.

So any government should work on improving the process if enough people are complaining and there are objective improvements to be made.

We don't have to think about which party to vote for to ensure eg. the government cares about improving lives of their citizens: they should all do that!

> Which only tells you that the issues with TSA are not politicized (in general). Which is a good thing.

Do you consider "fundamental to the system" better? I don't.

No government employee will get fired for enforcing the status quo or coming up with a new regulation that seems to improve safety.

However there is huge career risk to reducing regulation, easing up on "safety" rules, etc. And anyone who does that will be attacked and if possible punished if anything goes wrong.

Literally there is no incentive for bureaucracies to do better.

The problem is that such demands for a government that does better often go absolutely nowhere. As a result voters feel like it is easier to replace contractors than it is to replace politicians. Given the very high rate of incumbency, this isn’t entirely unfounded.

And what would you do to force SF to replace the private contractor they use for their airport if you end up not liking it? Your avenue is exactly the same as protesting against a public service.

If SF's contractor got caught killing a dude over bootleg smokes or kneeling on a guy until he died you can bet your ass they'd either be out or they'd be doing everything in their power to make people happy with them going forward.

Try that with a state sponsored security force.

But the article we're talking about isn't about homicide, but about much more pedestrian lack of efficiency and corruption (the price of airport food in NYC).

The government should do as little as possible. That they do a thing poorly is but one reason among many for them to lose the privilege of doing that thing.

> the government can't actually quite mandate a single vendor like that here; there thereby exist private companies that operate to the TSA specification, and an airport can go with one of them instead. The airport in San Francisco (SFO) is the only one I have ever seen do this, using a vendor named CAS

The following airports utilize the screening partner program: Atlantic City International Airport, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport, Dawson Community Airport, Great Falls International Airport, Glacier Park International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, Havre City-County Airport, Jackson Hole Airport, Kansas City International Airport, L. M. Clayton Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, Portsmouth International Airport, Punta Gorda Airport, Roswell International Air Center, San Francisco International Airport, Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, Sidney-Richland Municipal Airport, Sioux Falls Regional Airport, Tupelo Regional Airport, Wokal Field/Glasgow International Airport, Yellowstone Airport

Inflation adjusted, I'd be seriously curious how much you paid for that flight. My general understanding is that a ton of the "flying used to be nice" anecdotes are because in the 90s and before, almost everyone was flying at a cost/service level that's essentially what first class is now.

So, yes, everything sucks more now, but it's also far more affordable, and part of how it became more affordable was that the mid to late 90s brought the first wave of budget airlines like Airtran that lowered service and legroom and the like but made it cheaper.

There's a common refrain about a lot of things - air travel and the internet most of all, that amount to "this thing was better when it was a luxury service for only the rich."

Thats a fair point. I just flew to Europe for <$600 on a direct flight. Pretty sure that wasn’t even possible in the 90s, adjusted for inflation. Prices are definitely lower and more competitive. The experience has gotten somewhat worse though, unless you go through all the annoying hoops of TSA Pre/Global Entry/credit cards with Airport lounges etc etc

My first ever trip that I paid for myself was a round trip from NYC to Amsterdam in 2001, and I remember exactly how much I paid: $420

Southwest Airlines has existed since the 1967. Maybe flying is cheaper now inflation adjusted, but I was able to buy airline tickets as a college student in the late 90s/2000s.

> I know this sounds extreme but they need to deregulate and privatize every single thing about the airline industry

The massive deregulation that already happened is a very large part of why flying sucks. It's also a very large part of why it's cheap. You makes your choice and picks your poison.

>> EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT FLYING SUCKS

Except the eventual 1000 km / hour part

Flying out of ATL with TSA precheck takes all of about 1 minute.

This is complete bullshit from the delay of scale riding the “plane train” alone.

TSA precheck in ATL takes min 5 minutes on a good day.

Setting that aside again, airlines have now even taken the liberty of telling you “boarding doors close 5 minutes before departure and won’t be reopened”.

Travel today is so shitty you can’t even fathom what it could be.

How is a plane supposed to depart on the departure time if the doors aren’t closed and checks aren’t done?

I wonder how many checks require the door to be closed?

> boarding doors close 5 minutes before departure

Err... 5 minutes is extremely generous. Emirates closes the gates 15 mins prior to departure; AirAsia, Qatar Airways, 20 mins; EasyJet 25 mins.

> What strikes me today is that EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT FLYING SUCKS. Airports are just part of the problem.

And yet people keep flying. As long as the price is low enough there are enough customers who will endure the pain.

Things will change when more people stop flying.

because driving sucks even more

And even with high-speed rail, a lot of distances in the US would still be brutally slow, even with direct point-to-point rail.

At some point, trying to go from NYC to DC, let alone St. Louis or Atlanta, takes a pretty long time via non-plane methods. In some ways, the big innovation of plane travel is that for major cities, non-stop flights are an option, so it's hard to beat the speed of it. There's never going to be a viable non-stop train from, say, Miami to DC, but if it stops in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Greenville, Winston-Salem, and Richmond, then you've added hours to the trip time in stops/slowing down, which loses people as well who don't want to spend the whole day on a train.

There's a breakpoint around 4-5 hours where travel doesn't eat your full day, and there's only so many routes where you could get under that duration and still have enough volume of people to take it to make it worth running the route.

I think driving is far superior to flying in every way except one: travel speed.

I prefer driving myself, but fatalities per traveler per mile are another way flying is far superior.

Yes, that's true. I forgot that because it doesn't top my personal list of important distinctions, but certainly plenty of others would feel differently.

Changi in Singapore is very much a common space, because the security is at the gate.

Changi is a stunning example of how beautiful an airport experience can be. I fly through there + Singapore airlines every chance I get. Perhaps a benevolent "dictatorship" can be beneficial.

A single dictator has never really been the problem. You can find dictators that do better than democracies throughout history (especially on long-term planning).

It's the transition of power that's the problem. Like, a real bad problem. Like raze half your country and set you back 50-100 years problem.

What kind of dictator are you talking about? Roman-style, where it could be time limited, or the modern version, of which there are many terrible examples before power transition becomes an issue?

The fact that there are terrible dictators does not invalidate the point that there are non-terrible dictators.

I think the GP's point was that even with "good" dictators, the problems come up when succession needs to happen, which is why "dictatorships" don't scale.

Democracy has a built-in mechanism to stop any bad thing from happening in a change of government, while ensuring that change happens often (at least in a good one).

> What kind of dictator are you talking about?

A ruler with absolute political power.

> ...modern version, of which there are many terrible examples before power transition becomes an issue?

This actually reinforces my point. I never denied the existence of bad dictators (or even that the majority of dictators are bad, I think that's quite likely). This would make the power transition for a country that happened to get a good one significantly more dangerous.

> could be time limited

Roman dictators weren't like modern autocrats. They were officials, appointed for a limited time (usually no more than 6 months) to address some specific emergency. They weren't crooks who staged coups. And it doesn't seem to have been a desirable appointment to hold; dictators often stood down before the time-limit.

I mean your technically correct that dictators were supposed to give up thier absolute power and indeed some did. But there is definitely a reason the term has adopted it current meaning.

> It's the transition of power that's the problem.

That, and the lack of freedom, and the life you're subjected to when the dictator doesn't like you.

“Benevolent” dictatorship

Not really. A boarding pass is required for airside access.

Exactly. Changi is no different than other airports - you can only access the ticketing and baggage arrival areas unless you have a boarding pass.

It does have a massive mall attached to the public area though (Jewel).

Yes but security is done at each individual gate which makes a massive difference. And the staff is nice and polite. I don't remember ever queing for anything at Changi and I've used it so much. It's about the only airport I don't hate these days.

Security at the individual gate is also done at Kuala Lumpur, Doha, and some others. I prefer the usual arrangement of a centralised security check. This stack exchange answer does a good job listing some of the advantages and disadvantages of security at the gate:

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/34818/why-is-secu...

I think some of the space saving benefits are overstated. Baggage claim takes up a surprisingly large amount of space and you still need customs.

Security isn't done at the individual gate in Terminal 4 (newest terminal). And actually security screening at the gate is a pain in the ass. Once you're screened you're stuck in a room with no bathrooms (you need to leave and get rescreened). And if your flight changes gates (happened to me), you have to get rescreened all over again.

It is helpful in the sense that bottlenecks don't happen earlier on, but I'm not sure it's that great of an approach.

I got me a white bread sandwich with some shredded lettuce

And then I got me a ringside view for my quaint little fetish

I just wanna drain my little pink heart of all its malice

And kick back for the afternoon in this fluorescent palace

Reply on news.ycombinator.com