Why air travel hasn't gotten any faster since the 1960s | Hacker News Reader

Why air travel hasn't gotten any faster since the 1960s

alum.mit.edu

27 pointsnmorell75 comments

Air travel has gotten MUCH slower in the last 20 years. I need to show up at Logan about 2 hours before takeoff for a 90 minute flight to DC. The terrorists slowed flights down much more than fuel economy on all but the longest flights.

In the 60s and 70s every bag was searched by hand in front of you on international flights. We're actually no worse off than those days.

In the late 90s you could roll up to the airport 15 minutes before an international flight, walk to the plane hardly breaking stride for customs, fly to your destination, and walk out to the taxies -- again hardly breaking stride for customs.

Then there was 9/11.

...which, of course, involved no international flights.

You don't go through customs at all for an outbound flight. If you're a non-citizen/permanent resident, you just get an immigration officer to stamp your passport.

If you're leaving the US, things probably aren't much more involved at the destination. It's when you come back that you have to deal with pissy immigration and customs officers.

If you're flying from a Canadian airport to the US (from Ottawa or Toronto at least) you actually clear US customs while still in Canada. This is actually very convenient as before they started this clearing customs in the US would involve a long line if many fights were arriving at the same time.

>> (from Ottawa or Toronto at least)

FWIW, Calgary is this way as well.

You generally need to convince the airline you're allowed into the destination country, because if you're stopped at the border, they're responsible for you.

In many -- probably most -- countries there is some kind of outgoing border control for any international flight -- not necessarily "customs" but something similar. (I was actually detained briefly at customs leaving Sydney for Japan in the 90s. Never found out why.)

That's not immigration though. In the majority of cases, that's done automatically in the background by cross-referencing your itinerary and citizenship against TIMATIC. The passenger never does anything.

Didn't universal bag searches only start in 1973 in the aftermath of D.B. Cooper and all his copycats?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Airport_security

I was a little young to comment on air travel before 1974 from personal experience, but I do recall international travel by ship in 1970 and, again, border controls were quite tight.

Absolutely. The gains that could be achieved by flying even twice as fast isn't much compared to the time we could save if we could get to, from and through airports the same way that we move around subway systems: by carrying our own luggage, no check-in, no registration, no reservations, no security, no forced shopping malls, waiting 10 minutes for connections, not several hours.

A 2 hour flight, e.g. from NYC to CHI, is often 6-8 hours with all the surrounding nonsense. Getting from Manhattan to JFK, Newark or even LaGuardia is easily 1-2 hours, waiting in the airport, going through security etc. is another 1-2 hours. Getting through the destination airport from the moment the plane touches down and until you are actually leaving the airport with your luggage is rarely less than an hour. And then the transport into the city is another hour.

With transatlantic flights it's often 14-15 hours or even easily 20 hours if you need a connecting flight in one end, although the connecting flight is "just a one hour flight", because of all the waiting between flights.

Flying is great. Everything around it is terrible.

There are ways you can make many parts of the US experience better -- PreCheck, Clear, etc. if they are available at the airports you travel through. This has saved me a LOT of time at SFO and SJC.

For international flights returning to the US, at this point Global Entry is almost a must. Last return flight MUC -> SFO, if we didn't have Global Entry, we would have been in line for at least an hour. GE kiosk? A couple of minutes including needing to type in my flight details.

As PreCheck becomes more popular, I suspect some parts of flying will become a bit smoother for people overall.

I don't really care about going any faster. 8 hours to get from Europe to North America is fine with me. The problem I find flying is comfort. Since the 60's it's got a lot worse. It seems every year they cram the seats closer together and make the entire experience worse. As a tall - but not that tall - person (6ft1") flying can literally be painful if I don't get an isle seat. Obviously the issue is people want to fly cheaply. A good solution might be to introduce a new 'mid-tier' class between economy and business. I would happily pay an extra 10-20% for an extra bit of space.

That's premium economy, although actual value for extra money depends on an airline. In fact, the whole experience depends massively on the airline of your choice, with US airlines, in my opinion, being well towards the bottom of the pile.

And presumably they wouldn't need to charge anything like that to make it more comfortable, even taking out a few rows would make a big difference.

Having done a couple of 12 hour stretches while holding a small child in my lap, I'd definitely agree with you on making it more comfortable :)

This gets tried every couple of years. Trouble is, almost everybody buys the cheapest ticket. ANd taking rows out cuts directly into the bottom line -6 or 12 fewer passengers cuts profit instantly. So it never lasts. You can't fill up a plane this way, and that's the only thing that matters.

The last intercontinental flight I took, a weighty 6ft6 guy had bought the cheapest seat and expected to get an automatic upgrade on the plane. It's not an exaggeration to say that he literally didn't fit into his seat.

Indeed, he got the upgrade: the premium economy section was otherwise empty. Otherwise, the situation would have been beyond unpleasant for everyone around him.

The cheapest seats are so small that they need to have at least a few with more space for this type of case. If they can sell them to comfort-sensitive people for a higher price, even better.

> "Trouble is, almost everybody buys the cheapest ticket."

Ding ding ding! That's the trouble: we've gotten people in a state where they're sensitive to the very last dollar in price. People will actually pick the worse ticket just to save $5.

I used to work at an online retailer where part of our job was to market environmentally-friendly, recyclable, easy-to-open (read: no clamshell, no thick plastic) packaging to customers. We did some research into the price premium people are willing to pay for the lack of hassle. The answer was close to zero.

This is a classic race to the bottom, I have no ideas on how to fix it.

It's hard to even define what a fix looks like. If a customer verbally claims to want feature X, but it turns out they're willing to pay $0 for it and no more... do they really want feature X? This is a richer question than it may first appear.

There are plenty of things people want, but don't want to pay for. To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0.

Regarding airlines, I think the issue is one of temporal duration. I'm willing to suck it up for one (or two) 8 hour flights. It's uncomfortable, but whatever, it's over. I'm not going to pay an extra $100 to spare myself some temporary discomfort.

If, on the other hand, airlines offered some kind of subscription service (a la Amazon Prime) where I could pay $200/year to spare myself all future discomfort by getting a "free" upgrade to economy-plus on any flights I take, then I might be interested.

"To take a very prominent and obvious example, most people want to have sex, but the amount most people are willing to straight up pay for sex is around $0."

That's a bad example. There's ways to "pay" for sex other than just handing cash directly to the "other participant". In fact, most sex probably is not "free", if analyzed sufficiently carefully. Even if we count the monetary value of time at zero.

Similarly, customers appear to be unwilling to pay more for the face value of the ticket, which is why airlines are trying to make up revenue on other "extras": baggage, meals, extra leg room, etc.

While true for the majority of passengers, United has at least hinted that their Economy Plus seating is incredibly profitable, both through ancillary revenue and as a loyalty incentive (United's frequent flyers get extra legroom seating for free).

Given that Continental's management decided to keep E+ when they effectively took over United, my guess is the numbers were convincing enough that E+ was worth the loss in total seats.

They need to implement two things:

1.) Flexible seating in aircraft so that each seat can be adjusted forward/backwards between flights by flight attendants. Doing this by seat might be awkward for people sitting next to each other, so maybe do it by row.

2.) Bidding-style airline tickets. How much would you pay for the minimum amount of room? How much would you pay to get the maximum amount of room? How much would you pay to be allowed to recline the seat? How much would you pay to prevent the guy in front of you from reclining the seat?

These sound like terrible ideas, but in the airline spirit of dynamic pricing I think it fits.

Good point. Airlines seem to have caught on to this with ideas such as extra legroom and premium economy seats.

Exit rows usually offer this for $50.

Going faster would mean less time sat in discomfort.

It's OK (for me) to sit in the cheapest seats of a plane for 2-3 hours, but for 6-8 hours is very tough.

I guess it depends how far you're flying and how much quicker they could make it. 2 hours is my limit before the discomfort starts to get irritating. Usually by the last 2-3 hours of an 8 hour flight I'm counting down the seconds until I can get off.

British Airways World Traveller Plus is pretty good - much better than BA economy and without the silly cost of real business class:

http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel-class...

[Edit: I did a check on a random flight from LHR <-> SFO and Premium economy was about twice economy and about half of business.]

Thanks that's the sort of thing I'm looking for although I'd rather they reduced the price slightly and just offered the extra leg room. I don't really care about nicer meals or attentive service.

The problem is not to to just get from point A to B, but to have a good experience doing it. Air travel is getting worse every year. Starting from the airport checks to the long immigration lines (when traveling internationally) and super expensive fares for those "cuddly" seats, it can make holidays more exhausting than work. And if you live an hour from the airport, well good luck!

My idea of a grand future is when we can travel across the globe in less than hour, and pay less than $50 doing it.

I'll take the faster jet and be enjoying a drink in London before you even get your first "meal service".

If you only care about comfort, why don't you take a boat? A transoceanic trip for about $3k will get you an inside room and take ~12 days.

Are you sure you're replying to the right thread / post? Nobody said anything about only caring about comfort.

> I don't really care about going any faster

> The problem I find flying is comfort.

"I don't care about going faster" != "I'm cool with going 36x slower"

You only quoted text, did you mean to follow up with an edit to explain why that is relevant?

OP said planes are currently fast enough and they want more comfort rather than more speed, not that comfort is the only priority and the planes can go any speed whatsoever.

Could you explain your interpretation?

> A wife asks her husband, a computer programmer; "Could you please go to the store for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6!"

> A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk.

> The wife asks him, "Why the hell did you buy 6 cartons of milk?"

> He replied, "They had eggs."

Well that is what First Class is for. Oh you wanted it to be the same price?

It has only gotten worse since the 60's because now YOU and I can afford to fly. Back in the "golden age" people flew maybe once a year and saved in order to do so. Even then it was mostly well to do people flying - now it may as well be the bus. The relative price per ticket now compared to the 60's is nickles.

I flew on spirit airlines a few months ago round trip from DCA to DFW for $128. That's INSANE low. In 1960 dollars that would have been ~$16. You weren't flying anywhere for $16 in the 1960s.

People wanted to fly, so the airlines accommodated that by smashing us together and giving us low fares - making themselves not really that rich in the process.

>> "Well that is what First Class is for. Oh you wanted it to be the same price?"

First class is hugely more expensive than economy. I'm proposing a new middle tier.

I just did a search for a Belfast > New York flight next month.

Economy: £532

Business: £2,636

First class: £6,809

If they added a section with increased space for passengers (no champagne or other extras) and charged £800-1000 for it I'd pay and I'm not someone with money to throw around - that's how uncomfortable I find flying. All I'm asking for is an extra couple feet spacing between seats.

Premium economy?

I usually fly between LHR and SFO on BA premium economy. It's usually sub-£1000. Compared to economy, the seats are wider with more leg room and the meals are better.

It's a pity they still fly creaking old 747s on that route though. One time went to SFO through LAX where the first leg was on an A380 and that completely spoiled 747s for me.

Unfortunately, the A380 doesn't make up for the horrors of connecting onto an AA domestic flight at LAX, so I can't do that all the time now...

I would imagine that you've identified the problem, the price of the ticket is more related to the extra space you take up and the lost revenue they get.

The cost of a few glasses of champagne and slightly better food is a tiny fraction of the cost of flying.

First class is that price because they can, people want to differentiate themselves by paying more, not because they get a vastly better experience.

I am 1.96 m tall (6'5") and I would also pay 10-20% more for some leg room when I pay for the tickets myself. But when I fly for work purposes (i.e. the vast majority of the time), this is not an option, regulations say I can only fly in economy class. I suppose many people is in the same situation.

I don't really think having enough space to actually fit in the seat should be considered a premium. It should be a right.

I fly to Europe and Asia at least once a year, and somewhere within North America at least once a year. I've flown both coach and business class on all of these.

Consistently, the US<->Asia flights are incomparably better. If I could pay a little more and get a Korean Air flight to Paris, I'd do it. Coach on various Asian airlines is about as good as some European and North American airline's business class. Seat comfort, level of service, aircraft cleanliness, etc.

I'll add that my back is ready to go out on even a D.C. to Denver leg on United, and I've almost never flown domestically and not gotten some kind of upper respiratory infection as a final parting gift. Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, British Air, United International to Europe is a similar experience, just longer and more horrible.

U.S. East Coast to Seoul nonstop is one of the longest routes in current commercial service, and I've hopped off the plane refreshed and ready to go do things every time. The standard kit in coach even includes an eyemask to help you sleep and the flight attendants bring around hot towels every so often so you can wipe down your hands and face. Bathrooms are well stocked with toothbrushes and toothpaste and getting water or snacks outside of regular meal time has never been a problem. On some flights they'll even give you cans of spray water to spritz on your face to cool off and refresh yourself. Food is consistently "decent". And paradoxically, seats are wider, better cushioned and more comfortable than the business class seats I've flown on to Europe on flights half as long.

I wish there was some way to bring this level of service to Western airlines, but to be honest, I count a domestic flight on United a success if all the lavatories are in service and don't overflow into the aisle.

Surprisingly, my last SFO -> Europe flight, the United plane was more comfortable than the Lufthansa return (Economy Plus, vs. plain Economy for LH -- but LH seats are very austere/lack padding it seems).

> A good solution might be to introduce a new 'mid-tier' class between economy and business. I would happily pay an extra 10-20% for an extra bit of space.

United's Economy Plus is huge for me for this reason. An extra 3-6" of legroom (depends on the plane and the flight leg) makes a big difference at that height. It doesn't help at all with seat width though, unfortunately.

Faster is a big deal for me. Most of my flights are US -> Asia or US -> Africa. Going to Africa is a 25hr + flight due to the need to segue through Europe. Going back is worse since the segue is usually through the Middle East.

Going to Asia is a painful crossing over the Pacific with a brief stopover in Hawaii to make it at least 18hrs.

This article states the obvious.

I'm a little upset that there is no mention about fuel economy per passenger mile as that's where the numbers get interesting.

Concorde got 14 passenger miles per gallon, a 747 gets 91 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft). That's why planes are slower. I'd imagine that a 787 is north of 100(probably 120ish) passenger miles per gallon, but it too is slower than a 747.

Now, with current technology, we could build a plane that is as economical as a 747 and much faster -- this would be the Boeing Sonic Cruiser, but cost still wins.

As far as the whole 2-hours-before-the-airport nonsense, I don't buy that that's an issue. I haven't shown up at an airport more than an hour before my flight time in a long time (and have yet to miss a flight). I walk right onto the plane.

The bigger problem with travel speed is the last mile. It may take me two hours to go from Denver to San Francisco, which is 967 miles, but it takes me an hour to get from SFO to Palo Alto on public transit at the least -- in the same time I could already be in LA.

Have you tried entering or leaving the US when only showing up an hour before? I'd like someone else to try that and let me know how it goes. With international travel, it isn't the last mile that's the problem IMHO. It is security checks and customs and it is awful.

The US doesn't have exit immigration or customs, departing the country is the same procedure (airport-wise) as taking a domestic flight. Same security and often the same terminal.

I rarely show up an hour before a flight (including international) and I've yet to have an issue. Even United says that an hour is sufficient for international flights, even less if you aren't checking bags and can print your boarding pass at home:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/airport/proce...

Then how do you check whether somebody has overstayed their visa?

The information is forwarded to DHS but there is no formal exit process in the US.

Yes, many times. In the US it's no problem, there are no exit immigrations.

The only time I've been nervous about catching an international flight was from HKG->SFO when there was a small line for exit customs. I showed up to the airport about 45 minutes before my flight and their lack of TSA-esque security made up for waiting to get my passport checked. I got to the gate just as they started boarding my group.

I guess it depends on the airport. Boston is one of the worst I have seen. When I fly through Raleigh/Durham it is magical how much better it is.

Which terminal do you usually fly out of?

I'm nearly always flying out of C (United/JetBlue) and my experiences in Boston have usually been the opposite: thankful at what a convenient airport we have here compared to the other city in my trip [1] -- including Raleigh (though the rocking chairs are a nice touch!).

I never considered it before, but maybe Logan's terminals vary greatly in their convenience.

[1] Assuming the other city is in the US, since international airports are usually more pain-free than US ones as a general rule.

I don't fly too often, but it was actually terminal C where I showed up 2 hours early and then ended up diving through the door as they tried to close the jetway in front of me. That experience was on a Saturday morning. Week day mornings seem better.

If I traveled any more than I do I would sign up for pre-check.

All to do with cost. Fuel indirectly - going faster for shorter hops requires flying lower, with geometrically increasing air resistance and thus fuel expenditure. Going higher takes time on takeoff and landing, and requires pressurized cabin, oxygen etc. Making the plane heavier and costing fuel again.

So we're at a carefully calculated sweet spot. Until physics changes, we'll stay here.

So if the main issue is fuel economy, then we can assume that the future of air travel is an electric aircraft. I think weight is a major issue in electric aircraft design, how many batteries does it take to get an airplane off the ground ?

Electric cars and batteries are by no means my area of expertise, but I'd have to believe that the size and weight of the batteries needed for an electric plane would be totally unfeasible for efficient flight. Just for a comparison, a Tesla Model S weighs 4600 pounds, while a BMW 5 series weighs 3900 pounds, so the Tesla is about 20% heavier.

Plus, Jet A (kerosene) is relatively cheap compared to the cost of electricity and batteries.

Finally...imagine the range anxiety of a battery powered 777.

The range anxiety is based on not being able to fill up anywhere (electrically) even through there is plenty of alternative energy (gas) at every exit. There aren't any jet fuel stations in the sky, so planes already have this problem.

I don't think we'll see electric planes anytime soon since I see the future being a mix of all types of energy, but range anxiety isn't the problem.

Some ideas I've seen involve microwave power beamed down from space and/or up from ground stations. No batteries.

That sounds like a lot of birds would be wiped out, if it's adopted at scale.

You're better off using nuclear power or renewable energy to create carbon-neutral jet fuel than anything else. I doubt there's any other way to fly than hydrocarbons (or equivalent chemical energy). Nuclear planes are also a joke (I believe they are theoretically physically possible, but have to be huge, and of course there's the little issue of flying nuclear reactors around in the sky), all the other alternate energies are right out, and none of the non-rocket alternate thrust methods have anywhere near enough specific impulse to get a plane off the ground, to say nothing of the unpleasantness of something like ion drives taking off in the middle of populated metropolises all the time. (Any ion drive that could drive a plane would sterilize quite a bit of landscape in the process.) Rockets might theoretically work but obvious jet engines win out in practice in this use case.

When the Hyperloop stuff first being hinted at, I assumed the trick was electrically accelerating gliders in a series of hops (avoid the biggest cost of rail -- the rails).

The fact is that energy efficiency is never not going to be a factor and air travel is actually plenty fast for most purposes. The big problem is cost and external friction (getting to/from the airport, on/off the airplane).

It's like saying "phone calls haven't gotten any better in the last 50 years" -- except for cost, convenience, ease of getting a connection (e.g. you used to need to book international calls and get an operator to connect long distance calls).

How is that like air travel? "convenience, ease of getting a connection" for instance - we've screwed that up at airports for a decade now (since 2001 of course).

Not plenty fast for most purposes. Takes a day of pain to get anywhere. Used to be, you could go and get back same day. That's a huge setback.

Air travel hasn't gotten faster but it's gotten cheaper, more convenient, and far more common. Your complaints about air travel pretty much disappear if (a) you're a frequent air traveller and get pre-clearance etc. and (b) pay more for tickets (e.g. business or first class and more direct flights). So your problems are comparing incredibly discounted commoditized products to a very expensive premium product.

There are high end air-taxi and virtual private jet services around now that are probably less expensive than buying lots of regular air tickets was back in the 60s.

Car phones date back to 1946 (yep, surprised me too). So all the petty inconveniences of phones could be solved by money a long time ago (e.g. by having a secretary).

Not fair - its hasn't gotten all three of those things. Its convenient only if it isn't cheap. Ditto for common.

I don't get that conclusion - flying used to be a very expensive premium product? Not 20 years ago - ticket prices haven't changed all that much since then, at least out here in the Midwest far from any hub. I pay the same to get to the coast as I paid in the 90's to get home from school at the coast.

Last I checked, the 60s were more than 20 years ago.

Neglecting the weight of the engine / motor itself, the energy density of jet fuel is about 46 MJ/kg, and with batteries you can only get to about 1.5MJ/kg. Mobile phone batteries are about 0.5MJ/kg.

So thats at least 30 times more weight than is required with jet fuel.

Electricity is probably not it.

It's actually worse than this when you consider that aircraft become more fuel efficient the longer they fly, because they're not carrying around the fuel they've already burnt. An electric aircraft would presumably have a constant weight (stuff + batteries).

Absent a breakthrough in battery technology, EV-like airliners are unlikely, and in any event would not be a complete fix for "fuel economy" problems -- it isn't just about the simple cost of fuel, but also about range, size/weight/materials, and the number of passengers (and degree of comfort).

I think the major issue is turnaround time. It takes 7 hours to recharge my Leaf. How long would it take to charge a 777? Yes, "but swappable batteries!" And how long does it take to swap batteries including the inspection and paperwork that I'm sure must be required when swapping out a major component in a commercial passenger aircraft?

My wife and I frequently travel to London (we go each summer, and in fact are in the process of planning this year's adventure today because we've bought tickets to the Monty Python show at the 02!).

The first time I got on an international flight I was actually surprised that it wasn't more uncomfortable. There was some space for my elbows and I could comfortably use my iPad. That was for the first 4 hours. After that I was extremely uncomfortable and unable to sleep and I felt like I had been kicked in the face by the time we finally landed at LHR.

I'm a pragmatist, however, and so I don't complain too much about the cost (1300 or so each for a round trip isn't really all that bad). And I also understand that more comfortable seats take more space and use more material, which increases weight and thus cost. And at the same time, spending less time in the air means going faster, increasing speed and also cost.

Thus, it seems to me that the advancements need to come in the areas of materials (lighter, stronger build materials for the amenities) and in aerodynamics (which I'm sure are limited by safety requirements and the problem of getting that many people across the pond at one time).

It's important to note what are the long-awaited features in recently released aircraft models and the models currently in development - pretty much the only thing the're advertising is various factors that decrease fuel consumption - lighter weight by advanced materials, more efficient engines, etc.

I can't seem to be access the article, and so don't know if it focuses on waiting at the airport or the air speed of planes. Regarding the latter, for physics minded people, I recommend David McKay chapter on air travel[1] in his book "Without the hot air" -- actually I recommend reading the whole book, it's free.

You need to spend energy to counterbalance the drag on the airplane (which grows as speed^3) and to providing lift (which grows as 1/speed), so there is an optimal speed (if you are optimizing fuel efficiency). So you don't expect to see major increases in speed unless you are ready to burn much more fuel.

[1] http://www.withouthotair.com/cC/page_269.shtml

The article is about air speed and explaining it with fuel efficiency. I don't think a 10% bump in cruising speed matters all that much in the total door to door time though.

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