There's also some weird bugs where economy class Malaysia Airlines leg would be inserted when searching for biz. Kiwi.com straight up renders 0 biz flights when using their continent-to-continent search.
It's like intermodal containers for people. For short-haul flights it could cut door-to-door travel time by 2/3, since so much of it is taken up by ground transportation, waiting, ticketing, waiting, security, waiting, rental car counters, and more waiting.
No. You seem to be ignoring basic physics: this pod would be huge, compared to the space currently occupied in a modern plane by your bodies and your luggage. Your idea would work if you're willing to pay 1st-class prices for airfare, maybe.
Apparently it's all about "safety" - all passengers are supposed to evacuate in 2 minutes or something. Apparently it's quite hard when you are in a pod or something.
I don't care about all the fancy stuff you get in biz, just wanna straighten my body (especially with 20 hour flights becoming a norm). Half of my femur doesn't even fit in economy seat. Heck I could even sleep on that cold as floor, but of course they won't let you.
So just pop all the pod passengers out their window portals like torpedos.
I’ve seen some designs over the years that would take advantage of this space, but think it’s unlikely.
The cost of developing an alternate design would be incredibly high (especially when you consider the safety and regulatory requirements), and the the net result is more comfortable seating that would cause a portion of highly- profitable business class travelers to move to these cheaper seats.
Maybe such an opportunity will be exploited by an upstart looking to grab market share.
Yep, 240 daily departures is about right, 8-14F is easy too because of their consistent fleet. They've also got load factors around 77% [1].
The first class terminal is inside Concourse A (and IIRC, it's a long way to any other concourses). There's 12 gates at Concourse A IIRC (each with direct boarding from the lounge). Assuming each is an A380 with 12F, that's a peak of 144 people, or right around 110 assuming F load factors are consistent with their fleet average (although I seriously doubt it).
It's napkin math obviously, without access to internal data. It's also not so easy as averaging because Emirates operates a partially banked hub at Dubai so there's a whole bunch of arrivals and departures clustered together (check their early morning departures).
The "not having to see/deal with other people while you're waited on" is the value proposition of the DXB F lounge. Each of the top-tier global airlines has a different service philosophy for catering to high-value pax. For instance, Singapore waits on you hand and foot hoping to anticipate anything you could want. Cathay Pacific on the other hand FAs tend to leave you alone assuming you value your privacy, and you're supposed to use the call button (which is basically a starters pistol -- seriously, they'll be there in 7 seconds flat).
[1] https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-group-announc...
As soon as your customers are abroad there is a lot of international travel involved for the management levels of any company. Although more and more companies are cutting back and making people fly coach :/
But lately, I have gotten very picky about which legs I will pay the premium for business class.
I follow the (very effective) jetlag avoidance rule of staying awake all the way through to the next local nighttime, and then going to bed tired after being awake 24-36 hours (even if my body clock thinks it's 10am or whatever).
In order to do this, however, I sometimes need to stay awake for the entire flight - and that is hard to do in a nice big comfortable seat. I also need to spend a few hours standing and reading in order to stay awake.
All of this makes the business class premium not worth paying. I don't want to be comfortable. I don't want the lie-flat bed.
So if my flight leaves Zurich at 15:00 and I am scheduled to land at SFO at 21:00, it would be silly for me to sleep on the flight for ~3 hours and then be wide awake at night when I land. In this example I fly coach and stay awake (and save $3k).
But if my flight leaves SFO at 22:00 and lands in Hong Kong at 12:00, I will pay for business class and actually sleep (and wake up about 3 hours pre-landing at 09:00 local time).
If you are doing three international flights a year for work, economy class is fine (I can catch up on movies). If you are doing them once a month, economy all the time can easily become rage inducing. Business class at that point becomes a matter of whether you retain that employee (who you need to travel a lot) or not.
As a fellow tall person, I've idly wondered (but no more than that) if there could be cause to petition for people above some height (6'2" maybe? hard to say since it's really hip height and femur length that matter) to be considered a protected class, requiring a free upgrade if a certain minimum leg room was not available in a standard seat. I've had to do trans-Atlantic flights with my knees smashed, surviving only by frequent standeeism and my wife's good graces letting me take up part of her seat space.
I've seen some people use devices to block the person in front of them from reclining, but I'd rather not be that level of asshole. On the other hand often on domestic flights my knees are that device.
Don't expect it to ever trigger the same reaction as obesity does, which is treated as a curse and an illness (regardless of the underlying cause and whether it can be fixed or not), and is much more likely to fall into a protected class via the "physical impairment that significantly limits your ability in one or more major areas of life" legal definition. There is no fear of public backlash, bad PR, etc. pushing companies into giving you any (positive) special treatment so you'll just have to deal with it.
To be honest I'll more than gladly live with the disadvantages of being tall (mostly related to seating situations) given the advantages. :)
I used to think this way, now my back has convinced me that it truly is a curse.
That probably sounds strange to some people, but I think this is an issue that is often ignored. I'm 5'9", which is by no means tall and is considered "average" height, yet all the men in my family have long femurs and high hips, but short torsos (the opposite of the typical Asian body ratio). Even at my moderate height, coach is extremely uncomfortable for me because I just can't get enough leg room to be able to relax and not contort myself.
Fortunately, I've noticed that when flying coach in SE Asia, the flight crew will put me (and the other Anglo-Saxon passengers if there are only a few) in the exit row to offset some of that.
Most of the times when I showed up with a full price company bought ticket (coach) they would offer an emergency exit seat even without me asking. Almost never when I traveled privately with the same airline but bought the cheapest coach tickets I could get.
Sometimes I fly low cost because I know I can get the extra leg room with minimal hassle.
The least they can do is make it comfortable.
A cheque (or flexible per firm) could do the job of the former.
For the latter, if I’m going somewhere nice, i’d Rather they book me a hotel room for a couple nights instead of a lie flat seat.
Being bunched up in an uncomfortable position for that long in coach vs being able to lie down is a huge difference.
For an overnight flight, it's the difference between just sleeping through it and (however many) hours of hell staring blearly forward in a pained stupor, losing consciousness for a few minutes before waking up to shrieking pains from your neck and shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to sleep in a more ergonomic position before you are so tired you cradle against the window again for that precious ten minutes before the strain and impingement shake you awake..
I've tried a couple different neck pillows and they don't work for me. My head has got to be tilted downward or to the side, no matter how sleep deprived I am.
Oh, and if I go a night w/out sleep, I'm going to be 100% useless the next day and have a major impact for the next couple days while I recover.
Check on seatguru before booking any flights.
The math here is simple.
I don't understand this logic. Time == money. Unless your presence is crucial and you must minimize your time away from your home office this approach seems the most logical and cost effective.
I'm already 100% remote, so I can contribute effectively whether I'm at home or in a hotel recuperating from a 12 hour APAC flight in coach.
It’s ok if you only fly once in a blue moon, but if you have to travel multiple times a month, you cannot just keep padding every trip with 2 days extra.
The same for flights requiring a connection. Want me to sit in an airport reading HN for +$20/hr? Ok.
What I would like is an engine where I can punch in the various kinds of pain per hour I can tolerate and book that.
You'd have to completely finish boarding for lower classes and then give a decent grace period for first class passengers to just show up at their leisure.
Also first class (and often business) are kinda separated so no one stares you down.
I fly premium economy sometimes and you're the first to board and sit upfront and then you have to watch everybody walking by!
It's a world of difference between premium economy and business, sigh.
Norwegian Air Shuttle had a pretty cool idea with their premium cabin. It's not crazy expensive but the seats are so much better!
When I'm flying economy (most of the time) I always avoid staring at business passengers so they don't feel awkward as well.
"When developers go to a conference, do they fly first class? (I don’t care if that seems like a waste of money. Stars go first class. Get used to it.) "
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d...
Check out these:
- Pure Data (http://puredata.info/)
- Max (https://cycling74.com/products/max-features)
- My own (discontinued): http://www.nitrogenlogic.com/docs/palace/
My MO with technology is that easy things should be automated, and hard things should be made easier. Visual programming is one tool in the toolbox for leveling up technology and people's access to it.
GoAnywhere is mostly-visual programming that puts light ETL within reach of business analysts. https://i.imgur.com/ypH6IZC.png
Yes empowering people is great, but we live in age where software developement is about to get regulated, people routinely die from seemingly innocent systems.
With great power comes great responsibility.
The rare times I fly first it's just upgrades due to frequent flyer status
The trick to getting most upgrades from business to first is to request the upgrade as soon as you book the biz class flight. You're not likely to get it if you try to do it at the airport.
1) You don't have any holidays coming up: Go to the dedicated desk for first/platinum, about 2h before departure. Just check in and if business is full your status will get you pushed up
2) You do plan on taking holidays: Same, but the first question you ask is "do you need volunteers for downgrade?". Trust me, on Emirates they make it worth your while :)
Edit: the protip is the weekday Emirates India-Dubai flights that leave in the small hours of the morning (e.g. 2am). I guarantee the business section will always be overbooked
One thing they don't mention is the proliferation of private terminals/lounges for commercial flights. There's a lot of these in LHR. They have their own security checkpoints, and you're ferried by limo straight to the plane, to board first. So you get some of the advantages of flying private, but at a much lower cost (still upwards of 10k a year to get a membership I believe)