Why Airlines Make Flights Longer On Purpose (bbc.com) 219
dryriver shares a report from the BBC: In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven't moved further apart. It's called "schedule creep," or padding. And it's a secret the airlines don't want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment. Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.
"On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the U.S. Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report. The figure used to be 40% but padding -- not operational improvements -- boosted on-time arrival rates. 'By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you." He says if instead airlines tackled operational issues, customers would directly benefit. "Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2 which means if airline efficiency goes up, costs go down, benefitting both the environment and fares."
"On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the U.S. Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report. The figure used to be 40% but padding -- not operational improvements -- boosted on-time arrival rates. 'By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you." He says if instead airlines tackled operational issues, customers would directly benefit. "Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2 which means if airline efficiency goes up, costs go down, benefitting both the environment and fares."
Airline scheduling (Score:5, Funny)
It's like Scotty, How else can they keep their reputation as a miracle worker?
The repair needs two weeks. I'll have it done in six hours
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There's plenty of competition. They're just not competing (significantly) on on-time arrivals.
Just because there's multiple suppliers of something doesn't mean they must compete on every possible aspect. Some are too hard to differentiate, some hurt other methods that the company is using to compete.
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Plenty of competition? Four major airlines left. Prices through the roof. Services/experience worse than ever. John Oliver on mergers [youtube.com] It's a bit long, forward to 2:30 unless you want a chuckle or two. He's right, JetBlue doesn't count.
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John Oliver is slightly less factual than the onion
While he will correctly claim that his show is an entertainment program, not a news program, the stories he presents have been factually accurate. Obviously there is satire built in, such as promoting a hash tag of someone having sex with a Roomba. Of course that person isn't having sex with their roomba (I would hope) but the statement wasn't presented as fact. It was promoting a satirical hashtag. If you watch the show it is not difficult, at all, to tell what is fact and what is satire. And again, t
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While he will correctly claim that his show is an entertainment program, not a news program, the stories he presents have been factually accurate.
Which is even more frightening.
(Which, I just realize, sounds exactly like John Oliver would say after presenting a factually accurate newsitem...)
Anyway, the world came to a point where we laugh at the news and the actual investigative journalism is done by comedians.
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I don't give a fuck about "on time".
I care about "in one piece".
Dickheads who bitch and moan that the plane leaves late because the mechanics were checking something out, or they need to de-ice, or wait for weather, or because the plane has to divert for weather, etc. deserve to die in a ball of flame.
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So they say that you'll be somewhere at X time, and they get you there at that time, and they're shitheads somehow for that?
Who gives a shit how much time you spend sitting on the tarmac if they get you where you're going when you need to be there? You're still pushing back from the gate at a specified time, and landing at a specified time - times that you agreed to when you purchased your ticket - what the hell difference does it make if you're sitting in an aluminum tube on the ground, or at 34,000 feet?
Re:Airline scheduling (Score:4, Insightful)
No, This is just stupid bitching from someone who had to write a column.
Airlines aren't flying slower to pad the schedule. Flights don't take six hours, they take the same about of time. The schedules just allow for unforeseen circumstances...weather, maintenance, etc.
I have no problem at all waiting for the plane to be made safe and ready to go, delays for weather, etc. SAFETY is what is important, not getting there on time. An airliner is not a fucking bus. You can't just pull over and unload people while you deal with a mechanical issue. If they want to add an hour to the schedule and then get there early, so be it. You shouldn't be scheduling your activities so tightly to flights.
Re:Airline scheduling (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a feeling it has more to do with sharing runways with more flights, sharing air traffic control with more flights, and sharing the air with more flights.
If you had 100 flights a day in the 1960s out of airport X, and now you have 5000 flights out of that same airport... somehow I don't think they expanded the airport enough to keep up.
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The ATC system is definitely pushed to the limit.
If anything, the constraints on the ATC system and physical airport infrastructure, as you mention, is what drives most delays.
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The other possibility is that the schedule is more realistic now, based on the last 50 years of data. And according to the summary, the on-time rates have improved by making the schedules more accurate to what actually happens, but somehow this is a bad thing that we should be getting enraged about?
This article is basically trying to drum up some kind of rage at airlines for doing what they should be doing - having the schedules reflecting reality rather than bullshit. And is it really that much of an inc
Realistic number (Score:5, Insightful)
So, instead of reporting the best possible time that they can only occasionally achieve in ideal conditions, they are now reporting times they can usually achieve. I wish electric car manufacturers would start doing that for their cars ranges. If I recall, airlines did not start doing this until they started to be fined for being late.
Re:Realistic number (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, yeah. They are telling the truth (more or less) about how long the travel takes now.
Re:Realistic number (Score:5, Insightful)
Airlines used to plan best-case travel times, and many times that didn't happen. That could be for any number of reasons having nothing at all to do with their operations. Diverting around weather, lineups for departure, delays for landing due to weather, etc. Airlines aren't just flying around in circles to waste gas because they're 15 minutes early and have to arrive exactly on the padded arrival time, and being late impacts much more than just the people on that one flight.
Outside of major issues, most of the flights I have been on have arrived early. It is actually a Good Thing when something does delay a flight and it still arrives on schedule. It's actually a Great Thing when a small delay in departure can result in no delay in arrival. It's a Really Bad Day when a plane arrives too late to make connections, because that can result in multi-day delays in people getting to final destinations.
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How was it "spending 30 extra minutes in a seat" if they were earlier than the planned schedule?
You were scheduled for 13.5 hours in that seat, and it sounds like you got 13.5 hours in that seat, with a slightly larger fraction of it on the ground instead of in the air. What is the actual difference?
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Can confirm, there's no fucking point trying to watch a film on Air New Zealand flights anyway. Constant fucking interruptions.
Not as bad as Virgin flying into Hong Kong though. Those cunts interrupt you with an announcement from the pilot, which they repeat in a different language, then follow that with the same announcement from the cabin crew, which is also repeated in a different language.
Meanwhile I already knew what they were trying to tell me because the fucking seatbelt light had already silently sw
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but often airlines turn off most of the in-flight entertainment system on approach and leave it off after landing
And, more annoyingly, air conditioning. It can get awfully hot in these 30 minutes...
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Sounds like a shitty airline. Delta doesn't do that.
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Serious question.
If you had arrived "on time" and been in the same seat 30 more minutes in the air, do you think you would have felt better about it than arriving "early" and sitting on the tarmac 30 minutes?
Probably, its one thing being the air but being at your destination locked in would piss me off. Just open the door already.
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What, are you going to jump out the hatch?
If they don't have a gate available, they don't have a gate available. Which means they also don't have baggage handling available, etc. They have these schedules for a reason and if you move outside the schedule, then sometimes resources aren't available until they were scheduled to be.
Are you really advocating for a massive build-out of infrastructure to be able to handle willy-nilly arrivals? Or would you then be bitching about all the over-building and the ta
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What, are you going to jump out the hatch?
If they don't have a gate available, they don't have a gate available. Which means they also don't have baggage handling available, etc. They have these schedules for a reason and if you move outside the schedule, then sometimes resources aren't available until they were scheduled to be.
Are you really advocating for a massive build-out of infrastructure to be able to handle willy-nilly arrivals? Or would you then be bitching about all the over-building and the tax revenues and ticket surcharges necessary for it? I think we know the answer already.
No of course not. That's fair enough, they cant just have people deplaning like its a bus station or whatever. All I'm saying is that it would be more irritating (to me at least) being stuck on the ground for an extra 30 mins than in the air.
Re:Realistic number (Score:5, Interesting)
For some people, it would make no difference. But for the vast majority of people, being in the air for an extra 30 minutes would actually be less arduous than landing and being close enough that you could (regulations aside) walk the last few steps.
An illustrative anecdote that I saw a few years ago was about the design of a new airport terminal (I think it might have been Terminal E at Dallas Fort Worth or one of the newer terminals at Atlanta, but I am not 100% sure and my Google skills are as bad as usual...). The architects and designers were very vocal about how much time, effort, and new-fangled computer simulation time they had spent in optimizing the passenger off-boarding, minimizing the time and distance from deplaning to the passengers getting to the public areas.
Almost everybody who flew into that terminal hated it.
Why? Because while it was incredibly quick to get through the whole process if you only had carry-on luggage, the baggage handling system was the same as at every other airport. So people found that they got through security and to the baggage claim area very quickly, but they were waiting a long time for their luggage.
How was it solved? With a brand new automated baggage handling and prioritization system?
No... it was solved by giving passengers who were deplaning an artificially long route from the Arrivals Gate to Security, and from there to the Baggage Claim. The goal was that the passengers and their baggage should arrive at about the same time.
It worked... people now loved (or at least liked) arriving at the new terminal, because they were able to get to Baggage Claim, pick up their luggage (or wait a minute or two for it to arrive) and go.
The fact that they were not actually saving any time with the new process (no change was made to the baggage handling system, it was still operating at the same speed as before) was irrelevant and un-noticed. All that changed was the passenger perception - they were kept busy by walking, just long enough for everything else around them to work.
People are stupid. As babies, our parents give us brightly coloured toys to distract us and keep us quiet. As we get older, the toys get more expensive, but there are all sorts of adults giving us things to achieve the same goal, and sometimes we even do it to ourselves.
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I wouldn't call it stupidity that makes people feel this way. Staying busy by walking or driving is much more fun than standing still in a line waiting for something boring to happen (light turning green, bag showing up, the giant truck in front of you blocking your vision moving) that will allow you to move on. Even worse when you are watching the conveyor belt pass the same 5 unwanted items over and over and over and your bag never comes through the little cat-door i mean bag-door.
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Serious question.
If you had arrived "on time" and been in the same seat 30 more minutes in the air, do you think you would have felt better about it than arriving "early" and sitting on the tarmac 30 minutes? The sitting time would have been the same.
I can see you might have issues if they didn't let you use the restrooms.
Serious Answer: Absolutely, Yes. The flight was scheduled to last 13.5 hours and if we were flying for that amount of time I would have just accepted it. But to be told we were arriving early (Hurrah! Let me out of this tin-can!) and then being betrayed and having to sit and look at our gate for 30 mins, that was the worst bit. Those 30 minutes felt like hours.
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What?
It took off when it was supposed to.
You got off the plane into the arrival airport when you were supposed to.
You agreed to this schedule when you purchased the ticket.
Airport resources are planned around these schedules, and it sounds like you're arguing that the airport should wildly over-build to accommodate flights that might have a quicker tail wind than usual, or other circumstances like that which would cause early arrivals.
Again, you agreed to the schedule when you purchased the ticket. They ha
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For small delays they can just fly faster. It's well known that airplanes fly at slower speeds (optimum cruising speed) to save fuel. It's like you driving your car 80 km/h, or driving it 150 km/h.
If they are 20 minutes behind sch
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If they are 20 minutes behind schedule, they can just up the speed.
If they can, they might do so. Or the delay might be because of weather at the destination or en-route which can't be fixed by wasting fuel going faster. The delay might be due to headwinds, in which case they can still be delayed while having the throttle to the firewall. If you aren't going to be able to land on time anyway, going faster to get there sooner isn't going to solve the problem. Wasting fuel can also be a problem if you don't have the fuel to waste.
And for an hour long flight, making up 20 m
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It's like ISPs advertising 'up to' 25 mbps but only realististically providing 5 mbps, unless you are downloading from the ISP's CDN at 2 in the morning.
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And how is that different from stores advertising "up to 90 percent off" when it's mostly all MSRP or maybe 5 or 10 percent off?
Folks in general need to become more critical of advertised benefits. Reading the fine print is not fun though.
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Everything is kept equally slow so nothing looks "slow" decades later?
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Electric car mileage is not a self reported thing by the company. It is tested and certified by a government agency. Heard YMMV? Why is that? Everyone knows YMMV. It is basically a comparison tool. If you want to compare the fuel costs of two vehicles, you compare their reported MPG rating. To compare electric car with a gasoline car you compare the MPGe with MPG. It is still an imperfe
Re:Realistic number (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether the flight is "early" or "on time" is mostly driven by whether there is a gate available within their projected arrival time based on performance to the halfway point.
If the gate is occupied by an earlier flight, they slow down and arrive "on time" so there's a gate available.
If the gate is sitting empty because there's not enough flights to tax gate capacity, they arrive early. It's a huge PR win and it doesn't tax the ground services cleaning and prepping the plane for the next flight.
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Because different headwinds or tail-winds never happen. And the throttles are two-position levers - "stop" and "go".
If you have a late take-off, very often the pilot will fly the plane faster in order to still make the scheduled arrival time. And let me guess, the return flight was west-to-east, and thus you had a tail-wind the whole way?
There's far more reasons than "inflated flight durations" for what you describe, many of which are not massive leaps in logic.
It makes me feel good when I'm early... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this stuff is padded, and I think its great.
I do the same thing when I'm the driver of any trip. I plan for 9am, tell everyone else to be ready by 7:30am or 8am, and when we get a 'head-start' of 15 minutes everyone is happy. It helps when 'life' is baked into these times. I don't want to stress because someone takes an extra five minutes moving a luggage cart. I am not going to complain if I arrived in Chicago 'early.' Airline route times are there for customer service and this saves me so many headaches on the back-end that I call it one of the perks. Quiet time.
--
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening. -- Franklin P. Jones
Re:It makes me feel good when I'm early... (Score:5, Insightful)
But yeah, the article/summary is extremely biased. "Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays..." is just a biased way of saying they realized they were wrong, and fixed it. And it completely ignores the importance of schedules when there are connecting flights - I'd much rather sit at a gate for an extra 15 minutes than miss a connection and have to wait hours.
No, they're not wasting fuel and melting glaciers. Time is money, and they want to get there as soon as they can. But there are lots of moving parts not under direct control (think weather, equipment issues, and other airlines). The summary's comparison to 50 years ago is simple ignorance (at best, otherwise deliberate misrepresentation) - there are now way more flights and there's way more complexity/chaos to affect flight times.
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"Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays..." is just a biased way of saying they realized they were wrong, and fixed it.
It seems like the truth might be somewhere in between. There was a schedule, and flights could have stuck to that schedule. However, the flights kept getting delayed for a variety of reasons-- some economic, some technical, some regulatory. Being unable to fix those problems right now, airlines have chosen to pad their schedules so that flights are more likely to arrive on time. It's a reasonable approach, but not necessarily the best outcome. It'd be great if we could fix the myriad problems with air
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I don't understand why this is a surprise for many people. I guess that not many people really listen to what the captain pilot said when the flight was about to take off. The captain will always mention the "length of the flight" and it is always shorter than the time said when you book a flight.
The thing is, all delayed reasons are not from any flight operation (as it said in TFA) but rather something else around it. You know, when you deal with more than one person at a time, there will always be problem
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I know this stuff is padded, and I think its great.
I do the same thing when I'm the driver of any trip. I plan for 9am, tell everyone else to be ready by 7:30am or 8am, and when we get a 'head-start' of 15 minutes everyone is happy.
It was a thing with my brother any time a thing was we would tell him it was 2 hours before, he was that consistently late. It was one thing when we were young but its probably worse today. You arrange to go out at say 5, then when it gets to 5 that's when he decides to start getting ready.
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One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening. -- Franklin P. Jones
I talk to myself but I don't listen. —Elvis Costello
Asynchronous Travel (Score:1)
It is a high time to make the transition, onboard the system and assimilate the inevitability of asynchronous travel to release ourselves from the tyranny of timetables. The flight arrives when the flight arrives.
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That's all well and good unless you have a connecting flight. Oops, missed it? Then you get to wait 24 hours for the next one (in many cases).
Scheduling these things is pretty important from both a connecting flight perspective, as well as the efficient utilization of ground infrastructure (runways, gates, baggage handling, fuel availability, etc.)
questionable logic (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary, at least, it sure doesn't seem like this guy knows what he's talking about:
Padding the schedule, alone, clearly can't change the amount of fuel that is used to get from point A to point B.
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Yeah I was going to say the same thing.
OMG, the airlines realized the flights were consistently taking longer than the scheduled time so they updated the schedule to reflect the actual time. Those dastardly, environment destroying bastards!
Re:questionable logic (Score:5, Informative)
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"losses go as the square of velocity,"
Is it that simple? (And do you mean losses per time or losses per distance covered?) I'd think the efficiency of turbofan engines and airplanes is a great deal more complicated than "drag scales as v-cubed", which you would use for a car. At lower velocities, a plane needs a different wing angle to maintain lift; with lower fuel consumption, there's less fuel mass to carry; each engine has a different thrust/velocity/fuel consumption curve.
The biggest gain comes from th
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Todays fast AI like computers can allow for that in real time
Re: questionable logic (Score:2)
You are correct, it is more complicated. Turbofan engines lose a lot of efficiency at lower speeds. However nobody is talking about flying half as fast or less; if the aircraft is flying 10% slower than its typical cruise speed, it will be slightly more efficient.
Re: questionable logic (Score:3)
I should qualify that by adding some more complexity; altitude plays a significant factor in efficiency as well. Lower air density at higher altitudes reduces drag, but it also raises the minimum airspeed required to maintain lift. So, depending on the aircraft, you may not be able to reduce speed all that much while still maintaining the optimum altitude.
Yeah, it's complicated.
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Headwind vs tailwind is another major factor. Slowing down in a headwind means that your loitering even longer trying to "punch through" it. Slowing down in a 200mph tailwind means that you have longer for the jet stream to do 1/3rd of the work for you.
Re: questionable logic (Score:2)
V^2 scaling for fuel burn rate (I assume that's what you mean) means that the fuel consumption per distance scales as V^1, though. That helps, but not dramatically.
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It only saves fuel if the airframe was designed to be efficient at the slower speed.
An extreme case to illustrate the point is that an airplane can slow down enough to fly BACKWARDS. Slow aircraft combined with a strong headwind. I've seen it.
My 601XL seems to have a drag bucket between 50 and 60 mph. If I knew what caused it, I'd try to fix it, but my climb rate increases on BOTH sides of that bucket.
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Actually reducing the delays though would reduce CO2 emissions, at least from airports where the plane has to run an APU.
Also, schedule padding can lead to issues like a plane arriving while another plane is still using its gate, resulting in the plane idling on the tarmac until the gate is clear.....for two fucking hours.....occasionally having to rev up and move the plane so they were not in the way for other flights.....*starts mumbling and rocking back and forth*
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That's not the airline. That's a badly run airport.
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Adding to that, the longer a plane is on the ground, the less money it's making. There's financial incentive to turning it over as fast as possible and getting it back in the air.
If the airlines could get you off of the thing faster and put another ass in that seat, they would.
Actually, part of it makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet, I doubt it. Weather is your real issue.
For example, the good captain speaks about flights coming in too late or too early and how his software improves that. Fact is, if a flight leaves late, and flight crew does nothing, then it will likely arrive late (tailwind could change things). So, a good flight crew will ask ATC for more direct routes and will likely cruise at faster speeds (however, increasing fuel usage).
Yeah, I do not buy what he is saying. He is just marketing.
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My father was an AA pilot starting in the 60s. I got to fly in 707s, DC-8s ( as well as a DC 7 several times ). We had a LOT of weather and flew through it regularly. With the dc-7, its ceiling was such that you flew through the storms, not around. And even in the 8s & 707, they flew through plenty of thunderheads.
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The contention that airlines would somehow save money by reducing padding is clearly wrong, as if that were the case, they would have done it. The airline industry is competitive and like any competitive industry, it's in their interests to make as much money as possible.
TFA also leaves out a major difference between now and the 1960s- the number of airline flights is massively higher. This makes coordination in both airports and in the air much more difficult and provides many more opportunities for a prob
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Padding the schedule, alone, clearly can't change the amount of fuel that is used to get from point A to point B.
If anything, it should reduce the total amount of fuel used.
When people look up available flights, they take the scheduled time into account in making their plans. With more padding, more people will find that there aren't any flights that seem to meet the time constraints for their proposed trip, so they might forego the travel altogether or else go on a shorter alternate trip.
But then they couldn't push the other agenda (Score:2)
My best guess as to the excuse for the claim is that he's saying the airlines could improve the planes or routes somehow instead of padding flight times, but I don't really see how that works. Hell, maybe they just think that will make people pay more attention to an empty story.
Let's face it, this is a story about airlines providing better estimates for flight times. It's pretty boring.
the whole summary is stupid (Score:2)
first it says it's intentional that the flights take longer.
then it says that they were consistently late with the old schedules.
clearly they adjusted it for the time it actually takes when taking into account the airport traffics etc? like how someone can even write that up and not notice that they're full of shit in at least one of the sentences involved?
I thought the same thing.... (Score:2)
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No. Just no. An airliner isn't a bus. It requires a large measure of fuel just to keep it airborne. If you slow down, you could be burning fuel just a linger.
It is VERY complicated.
For the airframe:
- If you have a headwind, flying faster increases fuel economy.
- If you have a tailwind, peak economy will be at you best glide speed.
- The airframe is designed to me as close as optimum at cruise speed (those little winglets you see on planes now actually detract slightly from efficiency at off cruis
So what (Score:3)
People often need to make plans based on arrival time, be it for connection, train, or just when to get picked up. If padding gives a better chance of actually knowing when you'll get there who cares if it's longer than when you would have someone sitting at the airport for an hour for your late flight to arrive.
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This is why high speed rail is so much better for flights less than a couple of hours. Much more reliable time tables, frequent departures, and no need to go to/from and out of town airport.
bad story. (Score:3)
Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.
RIght there is the problem with media not undstanding what is going on, nor really looking into it.
The airlines used to give the average time. The fact is, that flight times vary due to a number of factors.
1) the flight might take off late due to local weather, or because OTHER airports in the system is backed up.
2) a flight might catch a STRONG headwind, or tailwind as in 50 to 100 mph. So, assuming 100 mph and a typical cruise speed of 560 mph, that means that flights might move at 460 or 660 mph. HUGE difference.
3) a flight might have to head 300-500 miles out of the way to avoid large thunderheads or simply to avoid hard turbulence, which most passengers are afraid of.
4) typically, if a large airport in a system (for America, ATL, ORD, LAX, DFW, and DEN are the top 5 airports), which any of these airports can be slowed way down or even shutdown due to weather), it will back up other airports.
5) Finally, flight operations CAN slow things down, but generally, this simply adds time to EVERY FLIGHT in/out of an airport.
So, claiming that it is flight operations is pointing at a minor issue, rather than the above major ones.
Typical outrage monkey poo flinging (Score:2)
"On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding,"
The figure used to be 40% but padding . . . boosted on-time arrival rates.
"By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you."
Er, no, it sounds like by padding, airlines are giving more accurate information on flight times.
Which was the intent behind the regulations that require compensation when flights don't go on time.
You're complaining about something that was an improvement, brought about by deliberat
Cruise Speed difference. (Score:5, Interesting)
That was why Boeing wanted to develop the SOnic Cruiser which would cruise at mach
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Yeah, the speed difference you note has nothing to do with the engine and everything to do with aircraft becoming more optimised for the job - the difference between Mach 0.85 and Mach 0.9 is negligible in time, but significant in fuel costs.
The fact that the Boeing Sonic Cruiser was going to use turbofans (specifically the same engines as the 777), kinda shows the engine had little to do with the speed chosen.
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Make flying much more expensive again.
That will cover the fuel costs.
Put profits into better tech again. The "jet set" will get even better flight times.
No longer will US jets be held back by EU factory, fuel cost and design limitations.
To finally escape decades of EU thinking like the Dassault Mercure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Thats some fine shit you seem to be smoking...
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727 and 737 used turbofans, not turbojets.
Even Mach 2 aircraft use turbofans nowadays.
Most agree, this is a good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
The people objecting are hoping that if they report actual flight time vs estimated total travel time it will somehow speed up the trip.
I assure you, airlines hate delays more than you do. Time is quite literally their money. If they can cut travel time, they save energy costs - even on the tarmac awaiting lift off costs them energy, which costs $.
They are doing a better job by accurately informing you when you will arrive, so that you family can pick you up with less wasted waiting time for them. Your waiting time won't be shorter if they don't tell you about it.
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Untrue. Ignoring supersonic flight and speeds just under Mach 1, there are essentially two forms of drag, neither of which scales exponentially. One, so-called parasitic drag, varies with the square of the speed, more or less. The other, lift-induced drag, goes down with increasing speed. Add the two together, and you get a "U-shaped" curve with an optimal speed in the valley.
Conspiracy level bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is conspiracy level bullshit. Correcting schedules for realistic time isn't about not fixing things that can be fixed, it's about accepting those that can't.
There isn't an airline on the planet that wouldn't choose to save fuel costs if given the chance.
Overly optimistic schedules are dumb (Score:2)
They're not "fooling you", they are being realistic. There's nothing sensible about a schedule that says "we'll get you to New York at 17:00, if everything goes perfectly". Because things don't go perfectly. Some kid barfed on the seat, or the fuel truck broke down, or a wheelchair passenger took longer to offload, or whatever. And when things go wrong - which they will - people counting on a punctual arrival will be pissed. How much better to say "we'll get you to New York by 17:30", and then pleasantly su
gate to runway (Score:2)
Last time I did the Newark to LAX flight it took and hour to trundle from the gate (left on time) to the end of the runway for take off.
The issue isnt padding its airport capacity.
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely that's just good schedule management.
"When we say we get there at 8, we struggle and usually only arrive at 8:30 on average. Therefore, it makes sense to tell people that we arrive at 8:30."
I can't see anything wrong with that.
Sure, maybe not "the fastest achievable time" but they don't claim that. Doing so would be stupid as it would open them up to all kinds of lawsuits.
I don't care about the technicalities. I want to know what time the plane (and therefore I) will get there, so that I can arrange to be picked up.
If one airlines says they can get me there for 8, and another for 9, and I need to be there for 8, guess what? I'll use that one in preference. Similarly, if I have to get there as soon as humanly possible, I'll use the airline that has the earliest arrival time, and others will have different times - whether that's because of the trip they take, the risks they avoid en-route, or their operational efficiency, it doesn't really matter does it?
Of all the accusations you could level at airlines "they gave us a more realistic time because they noticed that they couldn't always hit their promised time before" is hardly a bad one.
The skies were less crowded back then. (Score:2)
That alone simplifies traffic and scheduling significantly.
Its matter of disclosure. (Score:2)
Hub and Spoke Scheduling System (Score:2)
No one has discussed the hub and spoke system used by the airlines. Travelers have to travel to an airline's hub, such as Chicago or Atlanta to catch a connecting flight. The flights all need do arrive in a short period of time, so passengers can switch to their next flight. Then they all need to take off in a small window of time. Spreading the times out would result in published schedules with long layovers, which travelers would avoid. So, the schedules have 30 flights taking off in a short period of tim
Re: (Score:2)
True, and they have been moving that direction for at least 20 years. I think the decline in the use of the jumbos like the A380 and 747; and the huge popularity of the 737 and A320 is great evidence of this point. The airlines are realizing that a roster with many smaller direct flights is more efficient than one with huge hub-to-hub flights. Granted there is still hub-and-spoke by necessity, but that's not the part of the roster they're building out -- if anything that part is in decline.
Um what? (Score:2)
So they are using decades of experience to actually schedule enough time for how long the flights typically take?
Why ... is that bad?
More C02 emissions? (Score:2)
"Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2 which means if airline efficiency goes up, costs go down, benefitting both the environment and fares."
Um.. How's that exactly? All the airlines are doing is making their schedules reflect reality. How long does it really take from push back to shutdown at the destination? Put that on the schedule and keep folks happy because they may get their sooner than planed, won't miss connections as much, the crews are more likely to be where planned and ATC won't be clogged up with flight plans that only have to get their departure times changed.
If you think the airline is flying around willy nily just to pad their
Its not all bad (Score:2)
Urgh... (Score:2)
So the airlines are revising their schedules to be more in line with reality. Isn't this a good thing? And its not making the flights actually longer or is "bad for the environment." The flights themselves aren't changing; passenengers are just being given more accurate information about the flight.
Boarding and Bags (Score:2)
http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/wh... [cgpgrey.com]
If airplanes were willing to reduce checked-bag fees, and passengers were willing to delay boarding / disembarking, the overall process could be sped up drastically. But try to tell someone in row 20 that they have to wait to get up until someone in row 30 gets off first.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've never understood the desire for some people to get on the plane right away. You don't get to leave any sooner and you're just getting into a more cramped / crowded environment. That's why I don't mind getting stuck in Zone 5, Group 9, or whatever they call the last group of people getting on the plane.
Hallelujah to that! I'd much rather sit in what is almost always a more comfortable seat at the gate than in the cramped seat in the plane.
Re: (Score:2)
Depart early, too (Score:2)
I've also noticed they tend to rush everyone on board and leave early. I'm sure this helps their stats. However, I was bitten by this on a recent trip where my arriving flight was late and I rushed to the connecting flight gate arriving several minutes before the scheduled departure only to find that the plane had left the gate.
TSA (Score:2)
Re: Nothing New Here, Move Along (Score:2)
For trains, being early is arguably much, MUCH worse than being a little late, especially if you have to board at one of those intermediate stations. Passengers are annoyed if a train that's supposed to arrive at 5:15pm arrives at 6:30 and departs at 6:35, but they'll be enraged if the train they're supposed to catch at 5:15pm arrives at 4:57pm and departs at 5:04pm.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would you have to leave early just because you arrived early? That stop was reserved for you until the scheduled departure time anyway. Hang out at the station for a few extra minutes and give the crew a break. You probably want to stick to your departure time anyway so you don't conflict with other trains.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it is basic customer service.
If you're going to get there at 8:30, pretending does no good. The flight will take as long as it takes. Setting the schedule to reflect reality is just plain right, for customer service and management.
If you consistently arrive 'late', many airports will have the gate empty for that interval, wasteful perhaps, depending on demand. If you schedule realistically but arrive early, think tailwinds, you wait somewhere with the engines turning. Being 'on time' is the goal.
If you