Hacker News Reader

I've flown some 20 commercial flights in the last year and never faced any of the issues you've described. I find flying quite fun to this day. Perhaps this is highly regional.

A lot of the things I hate about flying are things that other people might well be fine with.

When someone tells me to arrive 3 hours before my scheduled departure time, to me it's disrespectful that they would waste so much of my time so unapologetically.

Other people might see it as no big thing, an enjoyable chance to sit and read, or do some people-watching, or a comforting safety margin.

When someone tells me to take off my shoes and belt and shuffle through a metal detector while they take my wallet and keys out of sight, under the constant threat of even more intrusive searches - to me that's extremely undignified. There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.

Other people might feel reassured by the process, or see it as no different to going to a swimming pool.

When someone demands I walk a needlessly winding path through a maze of tawdry shops selling overpriced perfume, to arrive at an uncomfortable seat surrounded by garish billboards.... you get the picture.

Most of these is why I prefer travelling from B-tier smaller airports. Security queues are usually shorter, there's few to no shops on the other end and you can go from airport entrance to gate in less than 15 minutes if only bringing carry-on, which is not difficult to do with a bit of discipline. It also means you can arrive at the airport an hour - hour and a half before departure. Of course that isn't always an option but I'm lucky that my most common travel route is between a B-tier medium-sized European airport and a tiny airport that sees less than 2 commercial planes a day on average.

Similarly, here in New Zealand any flights with less than 90 seats do not require security screening. On some routes, our airline flies turboprops (ATR 72) and jets (A320) on the same route depending on the demand / time of day. As it's a short flight (~1 hr), the flight-time is similar with either option but by booking on the ATR you can avoid security screening entirely. Paired with generally small airports, this means I can arrive at the airport 20-30 mins before departure.

>When someone tells me to arrive 3 hours before my scheduled departure time, to me it's disrespectful that they would waste so much of my time so unapologetically.

Technically most airlines only require you to arrive 60-75 minutes before departure for check-in. The 3 hour advice is just advice that you're free to ignore, but is probably a bad idea to do so given how much money/time is on the line. The 60-75 minutes might still sound like a lot, but gates typically close 20 minutes prior to departure, and boarding starts 40-60 minutes prior to departure, so they're only really asking you "waste" 20-30 minutes.

>There's no other situation in my life where people can control what I wear, or presume to separate me from my keys and wallet.

courts/some government buildings do similar security checks, and in some countries they do such checks in even more public places (eg. subways/malls/cultural sites).

3 hours is insane. Where I am they ask for 1 hour before boarding for international flights or if you have checked bags. I have TSA pre-pass, I check in online, and only travel with one carry on bag. As such I generally go through security only a few minutes before boarding starts as, like you, I hate waiting.

+ making you empty your water bottle, and then on some airports there is no option to fill it afterwards (e.g. only hot water available in the toilets and no drinking fountain)

Some carriers are definitely worse than others. I’ve flown about the same as you but over 10 years, and I’ve had OP’s experience once. We were stuck on the runway for 6 hours, given food vouchers that nowhere in the airport would accept, and then 10 hours after we were supposed to take off they told us our flight was cancelled and they’d organise accommodation. Except there was a huge concert on in the the city that day, so there was nowhere nearby. They left us in the airport with a “sorry” and no food.

Thankfully, I lived in said city so we went home and came back the following day. One email to the airline gave us £800 in compensation, plus the cost of our food and Ubers back and forth. Our travel insurance paid out for most of the things we missed out on like the hotel night, events we had planned, prebooked meal, and even our airport parking (which we did technically use). We were done and dusted with it within 7 days.

From my point of view you are really lucky, or you’re always flying the same stable routes.

> Plane not full enough to make a big enough profit?

I don't think margins are as large as you think they are... I checked Lufthansas 2023 income report and they made 6m EUR. For a company that size it's.. not impressive.

And flying a plane from point A to point B involves a huge amount of staff both onground and and in air, so cancelling a flight because it makes a loss or not enough is no surprise.

> And when accounting for door to door times, flying isn’t that much faster anyway.

I got a few days off work (finally) to go to Italy with the girlfriend. Total flight time is 4 hours with one stop.

Shortest train time is 26 hours, with 3 train changes.

> I checked Lufthansa's 2023 income report and they made 6m EUR.

That's not what I found? [1] The article states:

    The company more than doubled its net profit to 1.7 billion euros (previous year: 790 million euros).

[1] https://newsroom.lufthansagroup.com/en/lufthansa-group-gener...

The margins are not that big, yes. But it’s also part of the deal: I buy a ticket to fly somewhere, not for a gamble that on the day of the flight the airline will choose to disrupt my plans and cancel the flight because they’re not making money after all. You can’t have your cake and eat it, it used to be that sometimes they make money sometimes they don’t. Nowadays they cancel flights routinely because they prefer to screw you than sometimes make little or no money on certain flights. They want to win every time now at the traveler’s expense.

> Shortest train time is 26 hours, with 3 train changes.

Not saying this works every time from anywhere to anywhere. I’ll personally reconsider my destination if I can’t get there with a train but that because of how much I hate flying.

I’ve also done 8–9h on the train, booked a first class ticket, and worked most of that time so that my travel time counted as paid work hours. Then I didn’t have to worry about how much toothpaste I have in my luggage, what the size of my carry on is, whether my bags will make it to the destination at the same time as I do, whether the seat will be too narrow with no legroom or just merely uncomfortable, figure out how to get out of the airport and to my actual destination without getting ripped off… it’s no contest for me. Not saying it’s the same for everyone obviously, just laying out my thought process for others to think about theirs.

Not mentioning pollution of course. The train emits much much less CO2 per distance traveled, makes less noise, less waste (all these single use utensils and boxes the food comes in).

> I buy a ticket to fly somewhere, not for a gamble that on the day of the flight the airline will choose to disrupt my plans and cancel the flight because they’re not making money after all

The thing is, the majority of people will choose the ticket that is cheaper, even if there is a small chance of getting shafted. just look at how quickly ryanair grew, despite everyone knowing that each flight is a gamble.

So a carrier can either play by the legacy rules, and get eaten, or they have to play by the new rules

Which is why regulation is necessary in my opinion.

I also buy the cheapest plane ticket I can find when going somewhere because I know it will suck, I'll get shafted, and I'll regret my decision no matter what. I can't tell if paying for the more expensive tickets (within the same fare bucket) will result in any improvement or just throwing the extra money out of the window because I'll get the same experience as the cheapest one so I go for the cheapest.

In these cases, the market cannot regulate itself IMHO. It's a race to the bottom and if there is no legislation to compel actors to a minimal set of rules/conditions then we end up where we are with air travel now: it sucks more and more.

The regulation is there, not perfect, but you are just a vengeful customer based on your own description, like it or not.

Rest of us understand flying isn't perfect and bad stuff can and does happen, especially when its the last thing you need (ie well rested after long holidays and then some nightmare happens when flying home) but that's life. I've experienced the same also with Turkish airlines, stellar customer experience, 400 euro compensation on top of luxury hotel and direct ticket next morning. If you are so desperately risk-averse, yeah travel by train, those 2 days to Seville are wonderful (I've done it, but compared to 90 minute flight its pretty bad way to spend weekend and if you have small kids there is no discussion). Destinations further are simply not reachable in any other reasonable way.

Volcano blows up on Iceland or Sicily? Bam, half of the world is affected for days. Iran sends hundreds of rockets on Israel? Colleague of my wife got stuck in Jordan for few days. There is stuff constantly happening and events have cascade effects. Ever saw plane you just boarded suddenly be swarmed by technicians, and have it declared unable to fly afterwards? Imagine real world effects of such event. Plus airlines have razor thin margins, expecting perfection is... not logical to keep things polite.

It feels to me like there is a little wiggle room between "perfection" and being treated like cargo. Anyway you do you, to keep things polite.

There are rules though: safety is supposed to be equal. The Ryanair pilots have the same training as those flying for Emirates.

But in terms of quality I'm okay with "you get what you pay for". You don't have to fly low budget.

I think you misunderstood the gp. The problem is you don't know what you pay for. It's pretty much impossible to tell for a normal person in what different ways a flight A and flight B will shaft you to edge out more profit. This doesn't just apply to planes - we are long past where price has anything to do with quality.

There really need to be bettwer laws for making sure customers are fully informed of what they are buying. This goes extras for things like cheap flights where you are essentially gambling.

Tbf, Turkish Airlines is notoriously bad.

I also detest the Istanbul Airport with the bottom of my heart. Everything is overpriced and subpar in quality - unsurprising given that the entire airport project turned into a large graft by AKP affiliated industrialists.

I for one had no idea they were so bad until I had the pleasure to experience flying with them. I now try and warn everyone who will listen to pick any airline but TK.

> Force passenger to check hand luggage in.

For the most part, this is on the passengers. Everybody wants to bring the largest hard sided rolling luggage that could possibly be a carry-on these days. Those things take up space in the overhead bins very inefficiently, and the planes weren't made with that amount of carry-on capacity per passenger.

But something I thought of the other day is that when they start gate checking bags, it means they sold too many tickets that include a full size carry-on, right? Counterpoint would be that the later boarding groups implicitly may have to gate check their bags, and that's why they're cheaper.

I'm pretty adamant that most people should use soft travel backpacks or duffel bags. The proliferation of hard sided rolling luggage as a carry-on is a scourge.

> Everybody wants to bring the largest hard sided rolling luggage that could possibly be a carry-on these days.

This was far, far less common before they started charging for checked bags. Once they made that an upsell opportunity, people started behaving in exactly the way airline policies encouraged.

The other big reason is the airlines choosing to ignore baggage theft. I had a bag stolen out of SFO and they tried to first disclaim responsibility and then offered to reimburse it at like $2/pound, which again means that they’re giving customers a financial incentive to carry everything into the cabin.

Those carry on wouldn't have to be so large if.

* Airlines didn't charge so much for checked luggage

* Airlines didn't routinely lose checked luggage

* Airlines didn't routinely mishandle checked luggage, ripping bags, damaging contents and scuffing or tearing off wheels.

* Airlines didn't deny luggage repairs/replacements for damaged ones.

I've had Delta punch a hole through a hardshell suitcase with an aluminum frame and deny that it was damaged "beyond normal wear and tear"

I don’t think this is on the passengers. If checking luggage in wasn’t an extra fee (often), didn’t carry a material risk to have your luggage lost, damaged, late, stolen, and didn’t mean spending an extra 30–60 minutes waiting to collect it then I’d bet a lot more people would check luggage in.

Had a similar experience with Turkish Airlines, and I definitively agree on avoiding planes as much as possible, long-distance trains all the way.

From asking around (I had a loooot of time to waste in IST), TK routinely strands hundreds of people everyday at IST. That’s just how they operate and the treatment we received isn’t unusual.

It was seriously the worst experience I’ve ever had. Rude staff, no explanations, outright lies, condescending tone, hours long queues for meal vouchers that arent accepted annywhere or to get a crappy hotel for a few hours only, and just plain incompetence. I will never fly TK again, that’s how bad it was.

It's really sad. They used to be a good airline. They went downhill faster than the Turkish Economy.

Too bad that here the trains are even less reliable and often even more expensive than flying.

Train is always more expensive partly because they don't get the tax exemption and cheap fuel airlines get. If airfares were priced the way train is, they'd be a lot more expensive and much less competitive.

Oh please, trains would not even be possible without government exemptions for right of way (and usually a originally fully government funded rail network). For passenger trains the problem is lack of competition, not fuel costs.

> It feels like they used the pandemic to “push the envelope” and see how much more abuse customers will take, and set this as their new standard service level.

100 percent this. Like prior recessions, but even worse. With each recession we bounce back economically on the surface but the cuts they make rarely get reversed.

Customers for economy class seats are very price sensitive - if you were enjoying the experience then the airline wouldn't be cutting the services offered close enough to the bone to offer a competitive price.

You can pay for a slightly better experience, but it's very expensive!

What’s interesting about air travel is that it’s both a bad customer experience and expensive. I’m routinely paying several hundred dollars for a two hour flight that is cramped, delayed, and where passengers are shunted around like chattel.

Usually, when you pay through the nose for something, you at least get treated well.

Is it expensive on an absolute basis or on a relative basis? If getting a metal tube to fly through the air at 500 mph is expensive, then we shouldn't expect that you get a luxury experience just because the ticket price is $200 or whatever.

Also, I checked on google flights and a 2 hour flight is roughly equal to an 11 hour drive. Even if you factor in arriving 3 hours early for departure and 1 hour to get to your final destination, the time savings alone is worth most of the cost of the trip. If you factor in gas/wear on your car it's a no-brainer, even if it's "expensive".

[1] Chicago to washington DC

[2] $200 round trip, $100 for one way, 5 hours * $15/hour = $75

Yeah it's much easier to deal with terrible service when your return ticket with Ryanair doesn't cost more than 20 EUR. In the meantime the cheapest flight I was on in the US still cost $200.

Ryanair don't sell return tickets, they sell you two 'one way' tickets, last I checked.

Don't know if that legally exempts them from refunding both if they had to refund one.

We were 5 people (3 different reservations) traveling from EU to Japan for a ski vacation. Our first flight got canceled due to technical issues with the airplane and we could not get another flight to reach the transfer from Istanbul to Tokyo. We had to get a new flight that delayed our arrival date by 1 day. The worst thing is that they didn't rescheduled our domestic flight from Tokyo to Sapporo.

We went to the check-in for our flight to Sapporo and the staff told us that our flight was actually yesterday... Not wanting to waste another minute with Turkish Airlines support I opened my laptop and got us a new flight and luckily there was a flight in 2 hours.

As our flight was flying off from EU we were covered by the EU rights and all of us got full compensation for the delay - 600 Euro (420 at the end as we used 3rd party to handle it).

Now I'm trying to get full reimbursement for the flight from Tokyo to Sapporo as I payed for it out of pocket. They are arguing that each of us should have an individual invoice and we should have not bought group tickets. For this reason I would highly recommend to use 3rd party (they take between 25-30% commission) just not to deal with airline BS.

A 3rd party to deal with the airline on your behalf? Is this a service or an attorney? I'd pay a portion of a refund to handle that mess every time.