I frequently go from Portland to San Jose and back in the same day- I get meetings done and am home in time to put my kids to bed. I also just generally fly pretty frequently. I've got an Arab name and my dad comes from 'one of those countries'. I lived in that country for a few years as a child, and I've visited a few of 'those countries' in the last three or for years. I've literally not been hassled beyond the occasional extended screening XXXX on my boarding pass- like, maybe 2 times in the last three years. I have been bumped from a flight zero times in my entire life.
150 years go if you wanted to travel from California to Oregon you'd be going up the Applegate Trail and the TSA wouldn't even be top 10 annoyances along the way for travel. I say that semi in jest, nor am I endorsing the TSA in anyway shape or form. But frankly, if you're worried about getting bumped or hassled by the TSA I think you're worried about the wrong thing or you've got a very peaceful life that hasn't got many things to worry about.
I'm not saying commercial air travel isn't without its issues, it's generally just kind of annyoying to stand in lines, stand in more lines, then get crammed into a metal tube with my knees smashed against the seat in front me. It's just that the likelihood of some catastrophe (drunk, mental issues, etc.) that isn't self imposed is quite low.
My n=1 anecdote is just that, but I would wager I'm more likely to be hassled or be hit by airline failure given all of my variables AND the sheer number of flights I take compared to the average person. Yet hear am I saying the airlines and TSA aren't really THAT bad. Talk about playing devil's advocate.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I do have something to say about this.
Your situation is a bit different in that you need to be able to get from Portland to SF and back in a single day. Some people, myself included, don't have that restriction and value the journey as much as we value the destination. Personally, I absolutely LOVE long road trips. Seeing sites, eating at cozy roadside diners, listening to super loud music and sleeping in my car are all things I look forward to.
I really hope Microsoft doesn't fly their candidates with United anymore. A couple of big companies cancelling their corporate contracts might give them a reality check.
Have even cracked a joke or two with TSA agents & gotten a "Welcome to America, enjoy your holiday" at LAX.
I don't get ever get bumped from flights and I get pulled out for "random" searches on average of 1 times per year for the past 5 years.
Again, all anecdotal, but I'm the definition of the guy who should hate the airport. I only just dislike it.
Actually, I wonder how much this will last considering that fossil energy will likely cost more and more and that more and more people from developing countries start to travel too.
But seriously, flying sucks, I've driven 20+hrs to avoid it in the past. Usually worth it since I get to plan out stops and see old friends on the way down the west coast.
I'd rather rent a car and book overnight hotels than buy a US-based airline ticket, to the extent that I have driven (with another driver) 50 hours on the road to avoid 12 hours in the air. And with the prices of airline tickets, even renting the largest passenger vehicle for a week plus two weekends and staying in mid-range hotels was less than half the money cost for four passengers. Also, we got to see Oklahoma in its "everything is on fire" season.
That is the extent to which air travel has fallen. I would rather drive across a state that is literally on fire than fly an airline in the US. I would rather piss at a New Mexico low-water-use rest stop than in an airliner's toilet. I would rather be surrounded by an entire herd of leather-clad hog-riding bikers in the middle of nowhere than put a laptop or decent camera in checked baggage. And if I ever get forcibly dragged out of my seat by some thug, I'd like the cops to be on my side.
But you know what sounds not cool: being in an environment where you have no rights, and as you put it, are at the mercy of thugs.
Which is why he drives... I'll show myself out.
When I was flying back from Paris, I sat next to an Airbus engineer who was working on retrofitting jet engines to run on a biofuel produced via fermentation rather than normal fuel.
No clue how far along that project is or how promising it is, but there are folks in the industry thinking about this problem.
In short, flight prices are unlikely to be severely effected by oil prices again.
Since the oil price crash, investment in exploration has gone down dramatically, so I would argue the contrary.
When the current supplies start to dwindle, I would not be surprised to see oil prices strike $200 or more a barrel.
The oil crash removed the cost of exploration from oil prices, so current prices are no longer a indication of probable future supply.
There's a multi-year lag between exploration and crude coming to market. While futures/derivatives can cover that exploration for future crude extraction, there's a growing spectre of competitive alternative energy that will likely reduce the attractiveness of crude – i.e. there being higher risk of relative oil obsolescence, the anticipated return on futures diminishes, meaning less money going into exploration, even with what will be present-day high prices.
Given the lag in investment, I suspect that when the "spike" comes people will look as much to ramping up more immediate alternatives (solar, wind) than exploring for oil.
The above is all speculation of course, but the 5-10 year market forces at work are not pushing towards lower or even stable oil prices, but towards much higher ones – at least until demand drastically drops, which some figure is at least 15-20 years out.
Just my 2¢.
The fracking technology for oil and gas is still on it's Moore's Law curve and is getting cheaper and cheaper so in fact more and more fracking is coming on-line so that we're unlikely to see prices much above $50 per barrel.
Mar 21, 2017 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-21/big-oil-s...
April 12, 2017 https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-12/u-s-shale...
I keep http://oilprice.com/ in my RSS feed to keep tabs on the subject. It looks like the shale exploration is kicking up again (from the site and from friends working in the western part of ND).
and this helps http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Why-Breakeven-Prices-A...
PS: Oil is 53$ per barrel right now, 2x price spikes in commodity prices are fairly common historically.
Demand == Supply
And that's even more true¹ for stuff like oil, that has a low volumetric price. Do you really think demand peaked because people could not find more uses for the stuff?
Oil is in a peak production crash. The prices volatility is a natural consequence of it, and will always stay as high as consumers' budgets allows.
1 - That means, it's true for almost any misleading definition of those terms you can come-up with.
Actually I think the cost of fuel to fly a passenger from New York to London will be cheaper in 30 years, for two reasons: (a) Motor vehicles will no longer be powered by gasoline; and (B) planes will continue to become more fuel efficient.
On the other hand, planes may become electric, and the cost of solar power is rapidly falling. If this trend continues, it will likely become cheaper to fly in the future.
Even if planes don't become electric any time soon, other demand for oil may be displaced, lowering its price.
I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to piloting, but here on HN I've read other stories on light aircraft and training, and how forgiving it is and how it handles plays a very important factor in choosing an airplane as a trainer, no idea how that one does.
A nice advantage for a trainer is that unlike a combustion engine aircraft, a battery powered aircraft's mass isn't changing over time, so the learning pilot can expect a more consistent handling experience.
Making electric motors to spin propellers isn't that hard. We already do this for ships: any modern cruise liner has electrically-powered propellers (screws) that propel the ship. The challenge on a plane is getting the power to the motors. You could do a serial hybrid system, where a diesel generator makes power for the motors; this is what they do on cruise ships, but while it works well there for various reasons (including the variable-speed nature of running a cruise ship, and the usefulness of "azipods" for maneuverability), it's not likely to work so well for planes since planes in flight run their engines near full-throttle all the time (so you end up using more fuel, not less, due to conversion losses). So the idea is running the planes on batteries, like electric cars do now. The problem there is the weight of the batteries needed to store that much power is prohibitive. If someone invents battery tech that can store significantly more energy with the same weight, then the equation will change and we could very well see electric airplanes.
At busy airports like JFK and NRT, I show up no more than 90 minutes before boarding time, which gives me time to check my bags and go through security, and still have time to grab a snack. At smaller airports, like MCI, I show up 30 minutes before boarding time and still have time to relax a bit.
I prefer to check bags. It's free on domestic flights for me and a passenger because I have airline-branded credit card, I avoid the pain of trying to find a space for my carry-on, and it just feels nicer to be able to walk through security and to my gate without dragging around a huge suitcase. I've never once had trouble with checked baggage - no valuables stolen, nothing lost.
And what's this about the "ever-increasing cost"?! Flights are cheaper than ever. If you're lucky enough to live near a hub, you can get anywhere in the world for a decent price. At smaller airports, the hubs are just one flight away and might not even cost any more. If they do it's only $100 or so.
A 3 hour flight is more like a 20 hour drive. Take Chicago to Miami for example. I just looked some flights. A nonstop flight is 3 hr 5 min and cost about $200 round trip. You'd spend more than that on gas for just the one way trip if you drove. Not to mention a hotel since you'd probably want to break it up to 2 days driving.
I still need to show up just as early (as my local airport often has a longer line for precheck!), i still can't pack more than some stupid amount of liquid, or have my shit thrown out because I used a X-oz plastic bag which is too big!!! I still can't check bags as they just won't ever show up, or will show up damaged, have items stolen, or completely trashed from being searched. It only makes the cost more expensive, and it doesn't really help with the "invasive screening" (oh, i don't need to take my shoes off any more... i'm still getting scanned or felt up)
Plus I had to take a day off of work to go answer a bunch of stupid questions, pay them $80-ish per person, and give my fingerprints.
I live 45 minutes from CLT, with an office 45 minutes by taxi[0]from JFK, and when I fly into JFK, I can leave the house at 5am and be at the office by 10am.
[0] account_banned on Uber the first time I ever tried to use it, so, taxi it is.
However it did change my calculus when debating train vs plane for trips. It used to be anything under about a 10 hour train ride was a no brainer, now that's more like a 3 hour train ride.
Fuck the TSA and fuck the terrified Americans who keep voting to keep them.
I'm gonna throw a brick through your front window. No reason for it, just gonna do it. Hey, a guy's paying me to do it. Why you gotta be so upset about it?
Let me put this in perspective. The Twin Cities gained a new light rail passenger line a couple years ago. The construction cost for this new line came to about $1 billion[1]. I use this line every single day. It takes me to work and to home and out to dinner. I love this rail line. It makes my life better.
The TSA's annual budget is $8 billion[2]. For the cost of running the TSA for one year, eight metro areas could gain a new rail line. Every year! And what does the TSA do in return for this money? Waste my time. Waste your time. Piss me off. Humiliate me with pat-downs. Why the fuck are we paying for these clowns to do this instead of doing something useful with that money? Because of Americans who have never met a person of Muslim faith but are terrified because of the loud angry white man on TV.
Yeah, it's a big deal and I'm fucking pissed. Why aren't you?
[1] http://finance-commerce.com/2015/04/progress-mn-metro-green-...
[2] https://www.rt.com/usa/tsa-useless-airport-security-479/
As for TSA security theater and it's bloated budget, right on.
And then I agreed with the TSA security theater notion and bloated budget which goes against your thought I've given up my last ounce of humility in return for "security".
I suggest you read my statement again because you clearly misunderstood.
What kind of nonsense are you people preaching here?
How was he supposed to know that it's really water?
Just because it is clear liquid in a sealed bottle proves nothing, even if you are willing to drink it on the spot. See above, the part about heaven and zealots.
If he said "water" repeatedly, that's not because he actually knows or cares whether it is really water. It very well may be water. He's just saying that that is the rule; even if your liquid is just water, you need to ditch it. He's not going to say all this stuff about "how do I know it's really water" because he's not there to argue; he's just trying to move the line along.
This information all seems like common sense to me.
At that point, the rule isn't "you aren't allowed to bring liquids onto a plane because it might be a bomb". The rule is "you have to bring your bomb on the plane in a special bag".
I just looked at him puzzled, opened the bottle, and drank the water.
Now that I think of it, I was lucky he didn't taze me for my 'insolence'.
I don't plan on flying again any time soon.
Flying commercially sucks, of course, but the security line concerns are overblown. They've been saying "3 hours before departure for international, 2 hours for domestic" for decades, but I just ignore it. I routinely show up 30min before boarding for domestic flights (so, 55-60min before departure) and never have an issue. Worst security line I've seen at SFO was 25min. I was sweating it a bit, but I got to my gate exactly at boarding time, and it was a ghost town.. they hadn't even bothered to get the gate agents there yet!
The only thing you have to be careful of is, if checking a bag, to have it checked 45 or 50min before departure, that's the the tricky one.
Plus driving is cheaper and less stressful...
My experience going through security has always been much smoother than when I traveled to the US. Lines are smaller, security is more relaxed (never had to take my shoes off for example) and the security staff for the most part are much kinder.
When I flew through the US (arrived at DFW to connect to SFO, drove to LA and went from LAX to JFK) I think the only airport that everything was smooth was SFO. DFW was meh-ok but I had to go through immigration so don't want to consider it. But oh my fucking god, I pray to never have to go through LAX again, never expected to be treated like cattle with rude agents everywhere. JFK was a little bit better but not by much.
So yes, comparing my experience between LAX, SFO, JFK and DFW against ARN, MUN, TXL, SXF, BCN, FRA, CDG, AMS, ZUR and DUB... There's really no comparison, never felt mistreated or had any kind of problem with security staff or time in the queues in any of the European airports.
In every case the security involved an X-ray for luggage and walking thru a metal detector. That was it.
Australia in 2014 otoh was nuts. I was taken aside and magic wanded at one airport, subject to a personal body scan (???) and patdown at another, and interrogated on my way out (apparently "company employee" was not an adequate description of my occupation).
Combined with other security theater like police leading dogs around at the gate, it made me not want to visit there again. It was scary!
Mind you I'm from Europe, our gas prices are 4x as high and for trips to e.g. the UK or Scandinavia we have to cross a body of water. There's some toll roads too in e.g. France, and Germany wants to introduce those too.
The cheapest we could have flown is about $200 per person (2 people), not to mention taxi/uber costs.
So for one person, it might be a wash, but for 2+ people its very much cheaper to drive.
For example, I can fly round trip from Chicago, IL (ORD) to Miami, FL (MIA) for $325 per person (tax included, no checked luggage) taking about 7 hours each way (45 minutes to airport, arrive 2 hours early, 3:15 hour flight, 15 minutes to get situated, 45 minutes to destination). To drive that would take 21 hours and 1,400 miles each way which would cost about $300 in gas for my vehicle. This is really a best case scenario for flying being potentially as cheap as driving. If you want to fly to any smaller international or regional airport without frequent direct flights, the cost can easily be a couple hundred dollars more per person.
The biggest thing that could prevent this welcomed development? The government. Specifically that the FAA is likely to clamp down on "Uber Air Taxi" market and declare them common carriers.
Got to protect those monopolies.
The FAA has some really arcane rules, which is why aviation law is an actual speciality. Like, for instance, as a private pilot I can't fly a coworker with me to a conference and be reimbursed by my employer, but I can fly just myself and be reimbursed. There's a lot of subtleties to the FARs.
But if you're talking about private pilots flying people around like Uber drivers do, I can understand why they would clamp down on that.
Commercial and Air Transport pilots have much more rigorous standards than private pilots do, including stricter medical requirements and more thorough yearly medical exams. Private pilots will soon be able to get by with just an annual physical at a family doctor after their initial medical, whereas ATPs have to have a yearly EKG done, for instance. There's also more thorough training, higher hour requirements, etc.
Basically, people and equipment flying passengers are held to the highest standards (sometimes, maybe too high) which is one reason commercial aviation is so safe, and the FAA does not want private pilots who may not meet those standards running underground, fly-by-night airlines. All it takes is one crash wiping out a family in an "uber air taxi," and maybe a few people on the ground if it hits a house or something. In addition to being a tragedy the people involved and aviation in general, it would bring a ton of negative publicity to the relevant licensing agencies followed by mountains of lawsuits.
Without massive changes to the current aviation legal system, I can't see any way an "Uber air taxi" could work. Unlike a lot of cities which may not fully enforce a prohibition on services like Uber, the FAA will bring the wrath of God down on anyone they find willfully breaking the rules.
Until that comes down, jets will simply not approach uber-useful affordability for even people who buy full-fare first class seats.
(Fuel consumption is also much higher both in gal/h and in $/hr for jets compared to pistons)
And piston planes are not nearly as useful for air taxi due to them being unable to fly high enough to avoid most weather. Oh and in general turbines are an order of magnitude less likely to fail per hour.
From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry about if your ticket will actually get you on the damn plane!
If I have to choose between a 3 hour flight, and a 12 hour drive, the 12 hour drive is what I pick almost every time now. Ignoring "disasters" (massive accident, theft, etc...) I'm going to have all my stuff, I know i'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars on a ticket that will get "rejected" at the last second, i'll have a car when I get to my destination, i can bring whatever the fuck I want, and it's a fraction of the cost.