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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I live in Germany in 1999 and was excited as an American to ride the rails everywhere but I found that even then Europeans thought trains were passé and were more inclined to fly, but also that flying in Europe was a much better experience with less BS at the airport, more competition and less of the “let’s make coach as awful as possible so people fly first class” game that domestic U.S. carriers play.

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> but also that flying in Europe was a much better experience with less BS at the airport

For what it's worth, that's no longer true since 9/11. We have the same security theatre the US has (with the exception that we don't demand TSA locks), our airports have gone all in on upselling you overpriced crap (really, they're better equipped than some malls, it's insane), and Ryanair drove down the bar for "acceptable" behavior to below zero.

Hey, at least you can still keep your shoes on.

You don't have to take your shoes off at any European airport. Also the security people all seem professional and not on a power trip. This has not been my experience in America.

Yes, totally agree on the security personal. Everyone is shockingly friendly.

I stopped flying via US where possible as the experience was always horrific.

I worked in an airport in Europe for several years: it depends on the country, the airport and the flight (some commercial flights had special security requirements, extremely strict).

Depends on the shoe type. I was asked multiple times to take off heavy winter shoes. But no one ever told me to take off my sneakers

Maybe it’s not true for some countries. But I flew Porto to Barcelona and it was like riding a bus.

My record time from taxi to gate is 12 minutes at Porto airport.

There’s definitely no excess of security or any theatre. Very vanilla.

I regularly achieve this at JFK (having Global Entry certainly helps).

Global entry is for gate to taxi vs taxi to gate which is TSA Pre. I find taxi to gate to be a lot slower than gate to taxi.

You don't have to use the TSA locks if you go full American and throw some guns in your luggage.

Classic elitist response. Ryanair has done more to democratise travel than anyone else in the world.

Flying in Europe is now basically similar to taking a bus, even for all the full service airlines as well. It's only on a handful of international routes to Asia where you can get a nice level of service if you opt for the higher classes. In ever aspect there is very little comfort in plane travel these days, whereas train travel is generally more comfortable and with better services.

It makes sense that if you spend longer onboard, it's got to be more comfortable.

No, European short-haul is uniquely not comfortable.

European business class for example, is often just a triple economy-row seat and maybe the middle seat is blocked off. This is different from, say, American business, which is not great when comparing globally, but is at least a bigger seat with more seat pitch.

This is not really true for most long haul flights though, even the ones to Asia if you take economy class. At this point you are just paying for the speed of intercontinental travel over oceans and unstable regions, which obviously buses and trains can't compete with currently. The only situation where a flight is notably more comfortable than a bus or train is business class and first class on a handful of long haul routes of certain Asian airlines.

That really was a long time ago.

Trains are trendier than ever and the networks are expanding again. Sleeper trains are making a huge comeback and private companies are shaking up the industry with low fares on popular routes.

Flying through Tegel was a notorious exception to that less BS rule. The wait for our bags was longer than the flight in from München.

The new Brandenburg airport is pretty good, if a bit big.

I liked Tegel. The low distances between entrance and all the gates, combined with the per-gate security, allowed to arrive much closer to the departure time than at other airports, IME. I never checked luggage flying via Tegel tho.

And the luggage carousels were immediately after your arrival gate, no convoluted pathways to the baggage hall, off the plane, straight to pick-up.

But yeah I flew through it a few years before it closed, and you could tell that they were struggling to handle the flight workload of the 2010s in an airport built for an earlier, lower flight frequency (and pax per flight) time.

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