Suborbital spaceflight would be the ultimate: UK to Australia in an hour.
That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip.
Couple of hours to get to the airport, arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance to account for the variance in check-in, security, and immigration times and to get through the overpriced mall itself, then anywhere between ten minutes and over an hour for immigration and customs depending on what flights arrive at the same time, then something like half an hour waiting for your luggage unless you’re very lucky, then again a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
I’ve seen very few efforts to reduce any of this over the last two decades, and basically none as far as the things happening inside the airport are concerned. (Well, OK, automated immigration checks are a thing, but if you are one of a flight of people ineligible for them, fuck you, here are one or two border control officers that every one of you will be funnelled through.)
So while I can appreciate the idea of less miserable long-haul flights, I don’t think “in an hour” is worth anything but a sad chuckle. And I haven’t even accounted for the time you’ll need to spend searching for prices and rearranging your schedule to work around the price discrimination machine. Air travel just sucks, and I don’t think neat aerospace engineering alone can get around that.
Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC, and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration. Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if you pay between $50 and $300.
> Couple of hours to get to the airport
You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.
Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse area for it to be that low".
From North London, you should plan on more than 90 minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite.
Gatwick is worse.
Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going somewhere that flies from Stansted.
That said, I agree with the basic point that transatlantic tends to be an all-day thing (or a red-eye) and shaving some hours off the flight itself doesn't really change that. (And even if it made it easier to get to continental Europe on a daytime flight from eastern US, that matters less with modern lie-flat seating.)
If you're eligible, there are plenty of us who aren't.
I waited well over two hours at JFK last month.
> security is a breeze
I never did work out why it's OK for aircraft to fly in to US airspace with non-PreCheck passengers who've not had to remove their shoes at security.
Despite shoes not needing to be routinely removed at most (all?) European airports' security checkpoints?
I had to remove shoes at security at both JFK and SFO recently.
This may once have been true but I don't believe it's the case any more, at least not at the major European hubs I've been to.
There is no additional security screening if you fly British Airways to the USA out of LHR. This was no additional security at Frankfurt last month either.
MUC:
- 10-20 minutes from parking to baggage drop off, depending on where ypu park, can be almost 30 minutes for the parking you ise for vacation (and not the close by ones you can put in your travell expenses)
- 10 minutes, if you are unlucky a lot more, from baggage drop off until you pass security
- another 10-15 minutes to get fr security to your gate at Terminal 3
So, at the very least 30, in praxis more like 45 minutes, at the airport alone. And MUC is pretty well built and organized in that regard.
The local airport so, which has no real commercial flihhts anymore, is at max. 15 minutes from parking to gate, all included.
If you park at the discount ramps, you're usually adding at least 15 minutes if not more. Transit adds significantly more for most people, unless you have a train to the gate right outside your door.
> Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-sized airport. Half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
From https://www.mark-pearson.com/airport-distances/ - he used any airport with more than 100k passengers a year, so it's not counting rinky-dinky commuter airports.
An hour's drive :-) I'm closer than that to Logan in Boston and planning for 2 hours in the morning is not unreasonable at all. (And basically the car company I use won't let me plan for a lot less than that because they don't want to be on the hook if I miss my flight.)
Easiest for me is "drive myself and park at the closest ramp" but that's the most expensive after a certain number of days.
After a couple issues, e.g. arriving on a cold 10pm night to a flat tire I couldn't get off, I mostly just won't drive in any longer.
There are a couple bus services from the burbs but I haven't really been motivated to check them out for years.
Bus is hell, especially with luggage.
Abusing friendships is also a perfectly viable one, harder to get the company to reimburse ;)
These days I could probably optimize a bit by taking car service in and grabbing an Uber to come back home. But really isn't worth the trouble.
I live in London, UK. There are 4 airports in the greater London area. But the distance to closest airport means little. I never get to chose: given the airline and destination, that narrows it down to 1 of these airports; or on rare occasions 2, and then I chose based on flight price and time of day, and only then proximity.
Speaking from the center of Shanghai, it does indeed take a couple of hours to get to the airport by subway, though a taxi is more like one hour.
Airports don't get sited in dense locations - they make a lot of noise - so I can't quite follow your logic. If you live in a city, it's going to take you a while to get to the airport.
If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of course be a ridiculous conclusion.
The other huge advantage with picking the early flights - if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit closer and not be terribly worried.
If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is bad news.
Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.)
Then add some more because the flight is much less regular and costs £1000 rather than £100, so missing it has a worse outcome.
Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular public transport does not stop at the airport although there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is added to the normal public transport costs because that bus only starts from central station. Then there is the flight itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the privilege of taking more than a change of underwear. Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But... going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they seem to have problems with their security theatre show, somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place where I can take a train which brings me to the station from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time.
The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21 hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present) delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German stations during the hours of night when everything is closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than the rule. In short things are not perfect but...
Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half a day but it gains me the same in time to work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.
I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU.
What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.
Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's a big premium.
I'm not saying I'd not take it as an option ...
Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)
There’s been so much innovation in business class, but relatively little in economy over the last few decades. Is it because airlines are afraid of cannibalising their business seats? Or regulatory issues regarding non-standard seats?
If anyone can figure out how to give me a lie flat bunk for the same weight and volume per passenger as economy (or even premium economy) they’ve got my business for eternity. Sitting down for 11 hours would feel like torture in comparison.
So they'd have to design something really complicated, or get the governments to change the rules.
the regulation is not really that the seats have to be sat up per se, but that the plane has to be evacuatable in X amount of time, and the only way to do that for your average person is for them to be sitting upright. Which makes sense; it takes a lot of time for someone to get out of a lie flat position.
Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the airport for the average traveler? That would only be the case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away from the nearest major airport.
> arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance
3 hours is what's recommended for international flights, but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive.
> a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple of hours to get from their destination airport to their final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to guess, the majority of travelers final destination is within an hour of the airport they land at.
I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of air travel need to be made much more efficient, but inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.
These days even if the airport is far off (newer airports usually are ) they are typically connected via public transit pretty well. Munich is a good example - airport is good 30+km from the city but there is fairly cheap and frequent train service.
Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.
People don’t think long distance trains when talking about commuting to airports, usual expectation of any urban airport is it well connected to the city center
Have you been to Frankfurt airport long distance train station? It's pretty busy. That many airports have worse connections doesn't mean doing better would be unnecessary.
I more or less regularly have to use Munich or Frankfurt airport and take a long distance train. Flying closer to to/from my destination in Germany would be possible in theory, but is not attractive, neither by price nor schedule options. So I have the choice between a horrible airport with a good train station and a more decent airport with time-wasting train connections.
So IMO the ultimate would be something more along the lines of zeppelins. A week from Taiwan to California isn't so bad if I get to spend the time relaxing in a way similar to how I do on a sleeper train. Plus, airships.
If this is surprising, keep in mind that the rocket is only on for 8 minutes, and most of the flight is experiencing zero drag from being above the atmosphere.
If there are any decadent flights I'd like to take from seeing YouTube videos, it would be one on Etihad's "The Residence", but even that doesn't exist any longer.
This still exists. It is flown from London and New York to Abu Dhabi.
Q: How much more would customers pay for this compared with - say - business class on the same route?
Emirates (also ethihad ) have for example this ultra luxury suite with its own shower and bedroom in normal flights they sell for like 20k+/per .
It is targeted towards people who have chartered a private jet (100-200k+) and by most accounts the service is successful. However it just 1-2 suites in few select routes .
My point is it may not be typical business class passenger that is the target market, perhaps it those taking a private jet between these two destinations and they will definitely pay a lot .
Look at this way the “billable rate “ for a moderately sized company senior management would be in the range in thousands of dollars/hour, so 10-15 hours saved could be one way to price this service .
The key question is does it require million people / year or only thousand/ year to break even . You can easily do the latter , million people a year would be quite difficult.
Thanks to in-flight wifi you can still be working (and therefore be billing) while travelling.
People billing thousands of dollars an hour are not opening a laptop traveling or not, they have enough executive assistants for that.
People at this level[1] want to get things done quickly, if they can pay to avoid loosing a half a week for couple of meetings traveling back and forth, they won't hesitate to.
[1] Any level really, but executives can both afford to and get a return on this kind of expense
Personally I'll probably take a more comfortable trip over an incrementally faster trip. But that's just me of course. (Unless it possibly avoids a red-eye.) Business-class trans-Pacific is a bit boring but it's not really that painful.
(As I wrote elsewhere, my dad also used to prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde.) Comfort isn't just about speed.
People do that because it takes 15 hours to travel. 100 years before people will go visit say family for few weeks or even months because travel was slow, now we fly for thanksgiving and back at work the following week. Travel behavior changes depending on the mode of transport and cost of it.
> incrementally faster trip
it is not incremental, we are not shaving couple of hours, it is radically faster trip, 15hr -> 1 hr is a huge difference.
> prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde
Concorde was quite popular for that one route though, that was not enough to save it.
The challenge then was not there were not other economically viable routes - there were, it was just that nobody was allowing supersonic flight over land, for example San Fransisco -> New York route would have been very successful.
With 2.5 hour on a Concorde a flight you can work (i.e. do meetings) in both cities (esp NY->SF) on the same day. It is a 5 hour flight now you can really work in one city the day you are traveling.
...and those annoying time zones and the resulting jet lag*
If we could magically get from Europe to Australia in 5 minutes, I doubt that that many people would use that as an excuse to go to Australia for a shorter time.
* I've visited Australia three separate times in the last ~15 years, all three trips were very short due to external constraints, my longest stay so far was for one night
Wait until the safety and security people do risk and threat assessments on that. Worst case is fairly close to a suborbital kinetic impact missile, aimed at the region of a major city from halfway around the globe, with less than an hour's notice.