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> Couple of hours to get to the airport

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.

In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular example. It'd reduce it to at most a day. You're right that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the 24 hours of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold.

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.

>as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold.

Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's a big premium.

If people really cared about it, there'd be long distance airlines that looked like submarine bunks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVe_KaTGg8

I'm not saying I'd not take it as an option ...

Every time I sit through a hellish long distance flight I wonder the same thing. The closest anyone’s got is Air New Zealand’s Sky couch - which is a minor improvement on the status quo rather than a reimagining of it.

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.

I think the trick is it has to be able to "sit up" during takeoff, landing, etc.

So they'd have to design something really complicated, or get the governments to change the rules.

business seats can recline fully flat and also sit up and they take up a lot of room. given that the name of the game in economy is maximizing seats in square footage, we're not likely to get efficiency here.

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.

There are more luxurious options out there but something like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit painful/boring however you slice it though.

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.)

Getting tossed around in an airplane capsule during turbulence is not my idea of fun.

Plus, in SEA you can find the Business Fish in the walkway art of B-gates. Fun!

My usual experience flying between the UK and Europe and in three cases China was that 2 hours has always been sufficient before departure and that 1 hour is about the limit after landing.

It’s not about the mode but the max.

Why would it be about max? There are always going to be outliers in people's travel plans that make some aspect take longer than usual.

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.

It's really mode plus some standard deviation. Stuff can always happen. And sometimes the flight could just be canceled. If I expect it to be 90 minutes to get to the airport, I'm not going to assume it will take 4 hours because whatever even if if I'll miss one flight in my lifetime.

Because not boarding the plane is much worse than waiting at the airport.

I fly Texas to Florida pretty regularly for leisure with my kids. We all have clear/global entry. Our normal procedure is to pick 6-7AM flights with carryon only. This means leaving for the airport around 4 or 5. With a 2.5 hr flight that typically puts us out of the airport by 11 and generally starting our day by noon.

This is the way to go - and you can reduce luggage even further by "preshipping" via UPS or whatever, or if you travel to the same area often store stuff with friends/relatives/small storage unit.

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.

That's an internal flight.

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.

Pan-Amdahl’s law?

UK to Australia would be a huge improvement and would mean I am significantly more likely to go there. I already happily fly 2-3 hours across Europe without it taking up an entire day of travel (30 minutes to the airport arrive 2 hours before, 2-3 on the plane and then 10 minutes from plane to taxi/train at the other end) vs the same + 20 hours of flying and likely a stop over.

Depends on where you are, but there are numerous attempts to reduce these things in Canada ,where I live, and the US has similar schemes.

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.

If I take two extreme, Munich Airport Terminal 3 and the small local airport nearby, we have:

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.

The thing is that in the 90s it used to be 30 to 90 minutes for getting on board an international flight. Much like Concord we decided that slower is better for some reason.

90 minutes is probably still comfortable time for an international flight in the US if you have Pre-Check. I don't like rushing so I'd probably give it a bit more time but usually things go pretty fast.

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.)

"Travel time to the airport, door to door" is often much more than just "driving over there" though that can often be the fastest - drive to the airport, park on the closest ramp, walk in.

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.

> Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-sized airport.

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.

>ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive)

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.)

It's very interest the dynamics - the time and cost of almost all options available to me, end up being quite close.

Easiest for me is "drive myself and park at the closest ramp" but that's the most expensive after a certain number of days.

Parking at Boston Logan is expensive even with Economy Parking (which I joke is in Canada); the airport is very close-in to the city. In my current job, no one has ever pushed back on me using a private car service and, if I'm traveling on my own, it's usually for long enough that the car service is at least breakeven relative to driving/parking.

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.

Car service is almost always the way to go, I'm just outside normal "uber" range so if I want a ride to the airport, car service it is.

Bus is hell, especially with luggage.

Abusing friendships is also a perfectly viable one, harder to get the company to reimburse ;)

When I was younger and poorer, I used to pay poorer friends who lived nearer the city a few dollars to park my car near their place for a long trip and have them give me a ride into the airport.

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.

> immigration and customs are simplified

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.

It’s not OK to just fly in. Coming to the US you have to go through the special US pre-clearance zone that has extra security. You may not have to take off your shoes, but you often don’t have to in the US either. Really depends on local screening requirements which are wildly inconsistent.

> Coming to the US you have to go through the special US pre-clearance zone that has extra security

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.

It was the case just a year ago when I flew out of LHR. US flights were out of terminal 5 and a special pre clearance zone. I’ve been through Frankfurt’s pre clearance as well. Maybe things have changed very recently? It flew under the radar if that’s the case.

Maybe? I've flown out of Europe to the US many many times and never encountered any special security measures. Certainly not LHR (Terminal 2 usually I think) and not Frankfurt just a few months ago.

That is not true in general. You pre-clear at certain airports but you typically just go through standard airport security.

Yes, it depends on if the standard airport security meets US regulations for security. Many European and all Canadian airports do.

> Many European and all Canadian airports do

Despite shoes not needing to be routinely removed at most (all?) European airports' security checkpoints?

That's the main discrepancy which the US basically overlooks for non-US security procedures. (Though there's some seemingly arbitrary variance in electronics screening as well.)

Shoes being removed isn’t required in the US either. I haven’t had to do that in years. It’s a per-airport thing.

I thought that was still pretty normal. But I have pre-check so don't actually know.

It is normal. But the point is that it is not required that an airport perform that check, in the same way there are requirements about x-ray and metal detectors, for example. Some airports just don't do the shoe thing.

Perhaps that's the loophole. Although my anecdotal observation at the generally major airports I fly in and out of in the US is that people are pretty much universally taking off shoes if they're not in the pre-check line.

> I thought that was still pretty normal

I had to remove shoes at security at both JFK and SFO recently.

It wouldn't shock me if there were a few things that aren't technically requirements that are still near-universal (for non pre-check) in the US--which give some leeway for travelers coming in from overseas airports that don't have the same equipment or requirements.

> 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.

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.

> You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case,

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.

If you really need to get there quicker, there are a few companies offering motorcycle taxi services (where they ride and you ride pillion), which can make a big difference at times of busy traffic (though it does limit the amount of luggage you can bring).

Probably also increases the need for a change of underwear in the carry on bag you now can't take with you.

> Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip.

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 with the general point but "couple of hours to get to the airport" you must live a long long way from the airport if this is normal.

With poor public transit as well perhaps .

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.

Munich's train connection is not really good. Nearly no long distance trains and a very long travel time to Munich main station where you need to change unless Munich is your final destination. So you lose over an hour, nearly 2 taking the notorious unreliability of German trains these days into account.

Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.

For the most people destination is likely to be Munich , it is urban center with large population and density .

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

> People don't think long distance trains

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.

Sounds like you don't hold TSA precheck/global entry. You might want to fix that.

How exactly do you imagine TSA precheck will help on a flight between UK and Australia?