All-You-Can-Fly Airline Plies the California Coast
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Instead, we're running inefficient propeller planes for short distances and really high prices, and people are treating it like it's some amazing new innovation.
Without the regulations you could imagine an airport that pre-screened travellers. You roll up to the curb, get valet parked, and your bags checked, and then you get on the flight. You'd build the entire airport around this rapid on/off experience. You could have an airline that would run an Uber-style service to pick you up at your door. You'd solve the whole problem.
But there's no Toyota-style optimizations applied because these optimizations are illegal. Prime among them is that efficiency of this kind would make the airport more of a target IF it was also prevented by law from discriminating against potential dangerous passengers, which it would be.
And that's why when you ban selectivity at the federal level the necessary consequence is mediocrity.
The problem is that you can't reliably pre-screen for terrorists, the signal is plainly undetectable in the noise - there are 95 million passengers a year at Atlanta alone and 19 hijackers on 9/11.
You're bound to get a lot of false positives, and then what do you do with them? In the meantime, the actual terrorists just wait until they successfully get a guy pre-screened, and he then just walks on board with a bomb.
And, for commercial service under some parts, you're forced to use twin engines. Single engine aircraft are objectively better in a lot of ways, and on par for overall safety (it's better to lose an engine in ideal cases in a twin, but things often go wrong with the recovery procedures, and engines are very reliable, and with twins you have twice as many engines to potentially break anyway...)
Some of the badness is actually FAA not being able to fund better ATC allowing more flexible routing.
> Single engine aircraft are objectively better in a lot of ways.
Do you feel like giving us any reasons? :)
You may still value "has extra engine in case one dies in flight" more than this, though. (and I did, until I saw how singles actually had approximately the same safety stats as twins, at least for private pilots most like what I'd be.)
I'm pretty sure military maintenance standards are so entirely different that their extensive experience with single engine aircraft isn't meaningful -- plus, their singles are mainly either very military specific (F-16 and other light fighters) or historical. Most of their transport aircraft have something in common with commercial, now, except maybe C-130s. And the USN has generally favored twin vs. single for "reliability over water" anyway.
Single engine aircraft have been shown to be essentially as safe as twins, at least on light aircraft like these. Engines very rarely fail, and a twin engine light craft failing often fails in a way where the plane still is unflyable, or the pilots of those aircraft aren't able to recover (more of an issue for private single pilots vs. a charter with two). There are some ways where it doesn't matter how many engines the aircraft has, and the twin engines add complexity which increase the odds of problems (which generally cause ground stops or non-crash incidents, but which could possibly cause crashes). Twins also cost more per hour to operate (in fuel, and especially maintenance), and cost more to buy. Inexperienced pilots also manage to crash aircraft with two working engines by doing stupid things with the engines, where they may not in a single, although this is less of an issue with FADEC I think.
For a long flight over the ocean, a big twin turbofan ETOPS certified or maybe even a trijet or 4-engine aircraft is the way to go, but for short domestic flights over land, a single (turboprop, ideally, but even some pistons) would be my choice. My dream aircraft is a CH801 (kit) with a diesel engine (super slow, ~$100-150k), or a Cessna Grand Caravan ($300k and up to low millions if new and highly outfitted).
Have airplane piston engines become as reliable as turboprops?
The other striking thing was train travel in the South being heavily subsidised - huge distances travelled for not much money, with power for your laptop and lots of space to move around. If the train schedule was appropriate for you, you'd be crazy to fly instead.
If you want to leave SF/Oakland later than 9 am or LA later than 10 am, you have to take some long bus connections (which aren't very fun) and the San Joaquin or Pacific Surfliner.
So, the state needs to build new trackage through a 3000 ft (~1km) pass getting out of LA, and more trackage through a 1500 ft pass getting out of the SF area in order to use the much more straight and speedy right-of-way going through the middle of the state. Once that's done, and the rights of way along the corridor are upgraded, high speed rail will run between the points. Just gonna take another 15-20 years to do so.
Imagine getting on the train at 7 in the evening, lying on your own bed reading books and drinking tea, sleeping actually then getting off the train at 9 in the morning at the railway terminal in another city.
But the TSA thing is a real pain too. A friend of mine who has his pilots license requires all passengers have at least 16 oz of fluids and a knife with them when they fly :-) We joke but he did point out that if you were in flight 214 trapped under a stuck seatbelt or malfunctioning escape slide with no pocket knife you could have died.
[1] Plus fees of course
Maybe you can build a SAAS equivalent to SAP that puts it out of business... but companies will want a HumanBrainSimulatron (R) or a perfect weather forecaster or whatever the next complex software is, which will still be multimillion dollars' worth.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-...
With this airline, everyone will be required to buy a membership -- no "guests".
"Unlimited airpasses" for international visitors to places like Southeast Asia are pretty common, combined with long-haul international flights, too.
I'd do something like this if they covered Seattle, SF, Reno, Portland, and central-WA (datacenters) and central-OR (datacenters). Throw in SB/LA/SD/LV for extra fun, but the northern areas are what I care about much much more.
Light twin piston aircraft are not exactly cheap either.
Tip: Virgin LHR counter is well run and I look forward to stopping by for that reason. It's not about promoting a particular brand as a good way of doing life... leave the world a better place.
If you could shave $500 off your monthly rent or mortgage by living in a coastal CA city and just flying in to work in Silicon Valley or SF, I think a lot more people would be willing to sign up. The service would essentially pay for itself.