This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

GeekNights Thursday - Air Travel

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about air travel and flying. In the news, we're going to be at Anime Boston live! Also, there are people trying to create hell for prisoners a la Surface Detail, and the GH4 4k camera cometh!

Download MP3
Source Link
«13

Comments

  • Cool, there's even a movie:

  • In the Philly suburbs, getting to the airport might actually be easier than getting to the Bolt bus. If I drive to PHL, I can park in one of the inexpensive lots for $9/day and get a shuttle to the terminal. If I want to get a bolt bus to Boston, I need to either park in a garage for $30/day, get someone to drive me, or take a SEPTA bus and the crappy subway. In terms of overall travel time to PAX Prime and PAX East, it's a wash.

    (Holy crap, just found out JetBlue operates BOS to PHL as of May 2013. Goodbye forever, US Airways.)
  • The prospect of the majority of people at an airport not knowing how to fly is dumbfounding when you consider that half of them are probably flying HOME. They should have learned all their lessons on the flight out and be pros now. It's not fucking rocket science.
  • Apreche said:

    You know, I bet [Theodore Roosevelt] fucking appreciated [flight]. He was probably like, "Holy shit, this is fucking amazing."

    I lost it.
  • I feel like this is geeknights going, "How about airline food?"
  • was there not a star trek ds9 episode that did the jail in your mind story?
  • edited March 2014
    There is another goal of the criminal justice system that wouldn't be addressed by the "jail-in-your-mind", namely incapacitation. If your twenty-five year old pederast goes to mind jail for even a thousand years and wakes up in the real world five minutes later, he's still a young guy and able to act on his wicked inclinations if he hasn't been sufficiently rehabilitated. The way things are now, he would be separated from society for much longer than his five minute "mind jail" term, and he would likely "age out" of criminality by the time he's finished with his sentence.

    Sorry for all the quotation marks. I haven't posted in a while.

    There was an Outer Limits episode about a mind jail. It was actually pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentence_(The_Outer_Limits)

    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • was there not a star trek ds9 episode that did the jail in your mind story?

  • was there not a star trek ds9 episode that did the jail in your mind story?

    TY sorry did not click that link.
  • Yeah you guys pretty much sum up my thoughts on plane travel.
    The only difference for me is that I don't have to suffer flying American airlines

    Who is everybody's worst flight attendants?

    My vote for worst flight attendant crew goes to Qantas Airlines.
  • sK0pe said:

    Who is everybody's worst flight attendants?

    Probably me. Bastards.
  • sK0pe said:

    Yeah you guys pretty much sum up my thoughts on plane travel.
    The only difference for me is that I don't have to suffer flying American airlines

    Who is everybody's worst flight attendants?

    My vote for worst flight attendant crew goes to Qantas Airlines.

    They seemed fine to me. I don't think I've ever had a problem with any attendants, only passengers.
  • Flight attendants don't really affect my travel. Other than food and drink, I never interact with them.
  • edited March 2014
    I enjoy sitting near flight attendant stations and listening to them gossip sometimes. It's always at least moderately interesting.
    Post edited by Cremlian on
  • I have so many stories about different flight experiences that they are all boring now. Except for turbulence over Argentina. The good thing about seeing flight attendants flung up into the ceiling of the plane, and thinking I'm going to die as the plane filled with screams, but living through it, is that any turbulence less than that doesn't bother me at all any more.
  • We're driving to Disney World next month even though it's going to eat 3+ days of our trip, primarily to avoid flying. I mean, there's the expense of flying 5 people of course, but I can't say I'll miss the TSA, the ridiculously cramped coach section, etc. If I could never fly again, I'd be ecstatic.

    In the 80s it was so exciting to fly. Granted, I was much younger. But boy, has our local (BDL) airport rotted as the money has dried up. Then add the shit-flavored-frosting of the TSA, smaller seating, reduced amenities... I wish there was a way (beyond just abolishing the TSA) of revitalizing the industry again. Alternative fuels? Even larger planes? I dunno.
  • The thing that will revitalize the US airline industry is general economic recovery. Most other places I travel in the world are getting new airports and expanding routes and schedules. And they have nicer airlines too. Flying into Miami or other American is like traveling back through time, except with the TSA having traveled back in time with me.
  • I can't say I wouldn't rather live in the UK/Europe. I don't know how I'd survive there, but living in a country that seems to aspire to becoming the pre-collapse USSR doesn't appeal for some reason.
  • My cousin's ex-wife, who we're still on good terms with, is a flight attendant. She's got some good stories...

    I second the idea of using smaller, alternative airports instead of the big ones like JFK, Logan, etc., if you don't live within a short distance of the big ones. Around here, generally those who live north of Boston fly out of Manchester, NH and those who live south of Boston, like me, fly out of Providence, RI. I can't vouch for Manchester, but Providence overall is a much nicer experience than Logan -- especially if you have to drive to the airport. It's just much more laid back and less crowded.

    As far as Muppet and BDL (I assume that's Bradley Airport) rotting, maybe that's just a thing with that particular airport. Providence has improved significantly in the past 20 years or so, although the presence of Southwest Airlines (and, more recently, JetBlue, though only for limited flights right now) probably had much to do with fueling that (FWIW, Southwest also flies out of Manchester -- another reason why people often flock to that airport).

    One thing to keep in mind about the airline industry is, yes, there is smaller seating and reduced amenities, but the average cost of airfare has also gone way down too, believe it or not. The airline industry in the US has had a total race to the bottom because people kept demanding cheaper and cheaper airfares. Combine that with the increased cost of fuels and airlines are nickel and diming everyone left and right.

    Muppet, you talked about how exciting air travel was in the 80s. Well, let's look at the cost of a ticket back then vs. now. A quick Google search led me to determine that, adjusted for inflation, airfare now is 23% cheaper than it was even in the 90s, let alone in the 80s. If you're going to be selling the same product for 23% cheaper and you haven't had any major technological breakthroughs in efficiency to lower costs (which, there really hasn't been when it comes to airliners except for maybe the 787 Dreamliner), you're going to have to make up the difference somewhere: smaller seats (so you can cram more people on one flight to spread out the fixed costs of fuel, maintenance, aircraft depreciation, and flight crew pay) and reduced amenities.

    Finally, just a note on pilot pay. Rym and Scott are both right and wrong. Scott is right in that some pilots can make six figure salaries. However, these tend to be the most senior pilots at a particular airline, flying prime routes, in the highest-end aircraft like 747s and such. You only get these plum assignments after working for an individual airline for a decade or two, at least (and forget about changing airlines -- often if you change airlines your seniority drops back down to that of a rookie, complete with rookie pay, thanks to arcane airline union rules). Rym is right in that a significant number of pilots, especially new ones right out of airline pilot training, basically make close to minimum wage. What's worse is that unless you got your flight training in the military, the cost of getting enough training and experience to get an airline pilot's license can easily meet or exceed the cost of a 4 year college degree. The only glimmer of hope is that many foreign airlines often try to recruit American/American-trained pilots since our pilot training is so good in this country and they'll often pay fresh pilots more than American airlines would -- but you'd have to move out of the country to do that.
  • Ticket prices have gone down, but so has disposable income. A LOT. You can take almost anything in a vacuum and show improvement by carefully selecting your axes.

    I agree that not all airports have turned to shit like Bradley, but I don't agree at all that the flying experience hasn't significantly deteriorated, partly due to the amenities/planes and largely due to the TSA nonsense. The cost of getting on a plane is to be humiliated. That's not benign. I understand that frequent travelers are habituated to it, and that's even worse.
  • edited March 2014

    My cousin's ex-wife, who we're still on good terms with, is a flight attendant. She's got some good stories...

    We all do - for some reason(everybody has a theory) it's a career that leads to seeing a lot of crazy shit go down. I know a guy that got fired for turning around to a very green fresh-out-of-ground-school newbie and saying "Hey (Kiddo), wanna see a dead body?" and absolutely meaning it.

    If you're going to be selling the same product for 23% cheaper and you haven't had any major technological breakthroughs in efficiency to lower costs (which, there really hasn't been when it comes to airliners except for maybe the 787 Dreamliner)

    You'd be surprised. For example, Winglets, those little kicked up bits at the ends of the wings. They only started being commonly put on civilian aircraft in the 1990s or so, and there's been some developments with them since then - in the early 2000s, they figured out a particular way of designing them which led to a pretty decent reduction in fuel consumption(five percentish, I think.) Those big delta-shaped things on the tips of some wings are wing fences, basically the same thing.

    That said, of course, there's a pretty good chance that the aircraft you're flying on with any particular journey is a design that's very similar to the design from the 1980s with minor updates, because the entire plane is from the 1980s, with minor updates.
    Post edited by Churba on
  • Yes, disposable income has gone down, but that's a completely separate issue from ticket prices going down. If ticket prices had stayed the same but disposable income still went down, odds are that the flying experience would also have stayed the same, albeit with fewer people actually being able to afford to fly. Flying would've remained the domain of the rich and famous, kinda like, oh, how it was for most of the 20th century.

    The TSA is a separate issue as well from the issues of amenities/planes not being quite as nice as they used to be. I do agree that dealing with the TSA sucks and is absolutely worthless security theater. The amenities/planes thing all has to do with the airfare race to the bottom in the industry. Face it -- if you want nicer planes/amenities, you're going to have to pay more, and apparently most people aren't willing to pay more to get those.
  • A380's in service:

    "There were 123 aircraft in service with 10 operators as of 31 January 2014; these are Emirates (44), Singapore Airlines (19), Qantas (12), Lufthansa (10), Air France (9), Korean Air (8), Malaysia Airlines (6), Thai Airways International (6), China Southern Airlines (5), and British Airways (4)."

    787's in service: 122 in total, with just 8 for any USA airline.

    Keep it up, America!
  • 123 vs 122, looks pretty close to me... unless I'm missing something in your numbers.
  • edited March 2014
    Lou - they're separate issues that are strongly related and therefore relevant to a holistic understanding of the situation. I wasn't only complaining about cramped planes and lost amenities, I was saying that the entire experience of flying in the US has gone to shit.

    If it was JUST the budget experience without the TSA, I wouldn't mind so much. I'm sure I'd complain about how much nicer the experience used to be, but I wouldn't get physically ill at the idea of flying for vacation.
    Post edited by muppet on
  • 123 vs 122, looks pretty close to me... unless I'm missing something in your numbers.

    This isn't about Boeing vs Airbus sales, but who they are selling to. 250 of the 2 new prestige plane models, and of those only 8 sold to an American airline.

  • muppet said:

    Lou - they're separate issues that are strongly related and therefore relevant to a holistic understanding of the situation.

    In what way are the decline in disposable income and the lowering of airfares related? I honestly don't see any sort of relation between them at all.

    About the only possible relation is that airlines oversubscribed by buying too many aircraft and hiring too many crews at a time when the disposable income/airfare curve was high enough where they could have good quality service at prices that a large percentage of the population could afford to pay. However, as income dropped, the airlines had to lower their airfares and therefore cut costs in other areas in order to maintain their fleets at current sizes while still maintaining profitability. However, the airlines could at some point simply right-sized their fleets (depending on various accounting/fiscal rules) to better handle present economic conditions. The fact that they took the "cut prices to the bone" option instead of the "let's only serve those who can afford us" option is purely a business decision on their part, and arguably not a very intelligent one given how much they're struggling compared to present day luxury airlines, like Emirates, or even the airline heydays of the 50's-80's when only the rich and famous could afford to fly.
  • Airbus > Boeing
Sign In or Register to comment.