I've had enough (rant)!

**disneysteve** · 11-19-2010, 06:45 AM

I agree completely. The only time we fly is when we are going a distance that can't reasonably be driven or we have a time-constraint. We flew to California in 2005. I flew to a family funeral in Florida two years ago. I flew to a 1-day conference in Chicago a year or so ago.

Other than that, we drive anywhere within 1,000 miles. We drive to Florida every year - just did it in August. I don't understand people who fly from here (Philadelphia area) to places like Boston or Pittsburgh. Those are 5-6 hour drives. If you live 30 minutes from the airport and need to get there 2 hours before your flight, fly for an hour and then have to make your way through the airport, rent a car and drive to your destination, it will take you just as long to fly as to drive and that assumes that your flight leaves on time. I'd much rather hop in my car and drive door to door.

**jIM_Ohio** · 11-19-2010, 07:04 AM

When I traveled for a living 5-8 years ago we used to love flying. Wife could see me off right at the gate, I could arrive at airport 45 minutes before flight and make my flight without waiting too much.

In general the over/under distance for driving/flying was 4 hours. If I could drive there in 4 hours or less, then driving beat flying, but if drive was 4.5 hours, then flying was clearly the choice as the frequent flier miles could trump most of the fatigue and cost savings from driving.

For my company, this 4-4.5 hour range was in their travel policy. It was a big deal because Cincinnati to Detroit is just over a 4 hour drive, and Cincy was our world headquarters and Detroit was our biggest regional office with our biggest customer. So someone was doing that commute each week for sure.

Then 9-11 happened, and that 4 hour range was increase to 6 hours. If I could drive there in 6 hours I would not even consider flying, and if I could drive there in 8 I would need to really consider driving.

We were bought out right after 9-11 and our headquarters moved from Cincinnati to St Louis, so that commute was done quite often too, and that commute is about 7.5 hours, and I know very few people which wanted to fly to make that happen.

It is generally cheaper to "rent" a limo and have them drive you 400 miles than it is to fly that 400 miles. Cheaper in terms of time and reliability.

When the airlines value my time as much as I value it, I would consider flying more regularly then.

**biff** · 11-19-2010, 07:11 AM

I used to travel a lot for work in 2003. Now that I'm back in Ca, I avoid flying if at all possible. What a hassle!
Security lines, layovers, rude people, traffic....no thanks!

**disneysteve** · 11-19-2010, 07:25 AM

Another thing that has made air travel a pain is all of the nickel and diming with fees that they tack on now. The problem, quite frankly, is that air travel is too cheap. The average cost of a domestic ticket today is less than it was 15 years ago even though expenses keep going up and up. Had ticket prices kept pace with inflation, tickets would cost more today but they wouldn't ding you for a luggage fee and seating fee and a sandwich fee and a rebooking fee and all of the other fees.

**wincrasher** · 11-19-2010, 07:29 AM

Right now I drive between home and Maryland each week - about 7.5 hours each way. It's not a bad drive - I usually travel in the evening - listen to podcasts and the tunes on my iphone.

To fly would be - 1 hr to drive to the Baltimore airport, 2 hrs ahead of flytime to get thru security/ticketing/etc., 1.5 hr flight to Charlotte, 1 hr connection wait - 30 mins to Greenville - 30 mins to wait on bag/on someone to pick me up. So, at least 6.5 hrs to fly.

**Homebody** · 11-19-2010, 07:41 AM

I live literally 4 minutes from the airport. I hate flying, but YD, SIL and granddaughter live in coastal SC and I live in rural Northern Coastal California. Flying coast to coast is an all day long thing. So I will have the pat downs. I think the x-ray machines need more testing. I have had pat downs before and they were not that bad, but not since the new regulations. Who knows, maybe I will be driving cross country in the future??

**nick__45** · 11-19-2010, 07:45 AM

If it takes less than 20 hrs or 1500 miles, I am driving. If it's less than 2000 miles and it's personal trip, I am driving. Anything more than that is debatable. I want to maintain some level of human decency left in this world. I don't want to be subject to the typical gas chamber pat-down the Jew victims had under Hitler. What's next, will we all be handcuffed to our seat to fly now.

**jIM_Ohio** · 11-19-2010, 07:46 AM

Originally posted by disneysteve View Post

Another thing that has made air travel a pain is all of the nickel and diming with fees that they tack on now. The problem, quite frankly, is that air travel is too cheap. The average cost of a domestic ticket today is less than it was 15 years ago even though expenses keep going up and up. Had ticket prices kept pace with inflation, tickets would cost more today but they wouldn't ding you for a luggage fee and seating fee and a sandwich fee and a rebooking fee and all of the other fees.

Airlines never followed normal "supply/demand" rules of economics. "never"

two examples

Had to fly cincinnati to toronto to work. That trip is Sunday thru Friday (leave Sunday as late as possible and return Friday after work). Ticket priced at about $800.

There was a wedding in Albany NY for a cousin the Saturday before
If I booked 4 flights

Cincy-albany (Sat departure)
albany-Cincy (Sun pm departure)
cincy-toronto (same flight I would have been on before- sun pm departure)
toronto-cincy (same friday departure on other ticket)
it priced at $400

And my company paid the hotel in Albany for one night for saving them money.

I did flights like this twice (where I added a Saturday layover in another city for a wedding) and it always priced cheaper even though I was on more flights with the cheaper ticket. That does not follow normal economics.

I had co workers which added layovers in Vegas and do the same thing- he did this "every" week he traveled, but his tickets looked something like this:

Price Cincy to destination- usually cost between $600 and $800
Price Cincy to vegas on Friday or Saturday, then vegas to destination on Sunday, then destination back to cincy the following Friday- and he would get 10-30 trips to vegas PLUS 10-30 more legs for freqent flier status (at that time Delta gave Medallion status if you had 30 flights in one year) and that status gave a 25% bonus for frequent flier miles plus first class upgrades.

Factor in Cincy to Vegas is a 4 hour flight, where as Cincy to anywhere east of Mississippi (where our region was) is no more than a 2 hour flight (there are some 2.5 hour flights to eastern Long Island, but Cincy is relatively close to 75% of the country's population- 75% of USA is within 500 miles of Cincinnati). Dallas and Los Angeles would be 2 biggest exceptions. So it is cheaper for someone to be in air 8 hours than it would be to be in air 4 hours. Makes NO SENSE.

**disneysteve** · 11-19-2010, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by Homebody View Post

I think the x-ray machines need more testing.

Personally, I'm not at all concerned about the privacy issue from the scans. I'm concerned about the radiation exposure, especially for children and frequent fliers. I've seen conflicting reports about how much radiation exposure results from these scans.

A friend sent me a joke recently. The gist was that the Israelis are developing a new airport security device. It doesn't do any scan or involve any radiation. You just step into a small booth and the device detonates any explosives you may be carrying. End of story. Other folks in the airport just hear a muffled explosion and than an announcement over the PA, "Attention passengers, a seat is now available on Flight #327."

**wincrasher** · 11-19-2010, 07:57 AM

Flying is strange economics to be sure. But flying 15 years ago, the price might be the same or more now as then, but the flights now are litterally packed.

I remember taking some trips on a 737 where it was only me and maybe 5 other people. The flights were on a schedule and they ran it like the trains. That must have been very wasteful. Cutting down the number and flights cut alot of overhead and expense that was used to buffer the increase in costs of everything else - primarily fuel.

**MonkeyMama** · 11-19-2010, 08:16 AM

We've been lucky lately. Our last flight was delayed about 4 hours (from 10pm to 2am arrival), and United was surprisingly accomodating. We got $500 towards our next airline purchase (gave it to a relative who turned those into free flights to Vegas). But, we fly very little.

I certainly can complain:

With the increased security (which mostly seems like nonsense), I had taken to checking more baggage rather than dealing with all the liquid screening -

But, last time we flew, we learned it would be $25 per bag, per flight. To check one bag would be $50 round-trip.

I just absolutely refuse to pay one dime to check my baggage.

It has become a HUGE to-do, to fly. I may feel different if I thought all this security was truly effective.

We really don't fly much. L.A. is about a 6-hour drive from us, and we drive there all the time. May have flown once due to time contraints. Our friends are always flying there for Disney, etc. They look at us like we are the weird ones. I figure by the time I get to the airport, figure out parking/transportation, go through security, fly, and figure out how to get to where I am going - it's all going to take quite a few hours anyway. I'd rather just DRIVE.

**greenskeeper** · 11-19-2010, 12:48 PM

Originally posted by disneysteve View Post

Another thing that has made air travel a pain is all of the nickel and diming with fees that they tack on now. The problem, quite frankly, is that air travel is too cheap. The average cost of a domestic ticket today is less than it was 15 years ago even though expenses keep going up and up. Had ticket prices kept pace with inflation, tickets would cost more today but they wouldn't ding you for a luggage fee and seating fee and a sandwich fee and a rebooking fee and all of the other fees.

It's all to hide the true cost of flying. Not to mention the government subsidies!

As for security, we need to take a real good look at the way they do it in Israel.

**jIM_Ohio** · 11-19-2010, 01:07 PM

One of the issues with flying is the principal of using "hubs".

Transporting fliers to one central airport, then dispersing from that one airport creates as many problems as it solves.

For example, living in a delta hub, I have a choice, fly delta from cincy, or travel 100 miles to another airport and use another airline. Delta controls all flights in and out of this city, and it is clear from the prices that there is no competition.

I have used the Atlanta airport, and Cincy's setup is a miniature version of Atlanta, (Atlanta has 5 terminals, Cincy has 2.5 terminals connected the same way as Atlanta). The configuration is "exactly" the same as best I can tell.

I have "connected" thru Cincy a couple of times, and it's nice to connect thru. I have connected thru Atlanta numerous times, and my comment is that its always busy. Good for Atlanta... but it's also the busiest airport in the USA I believe. If weather hits Atlanta, especially early in the day, just about every Delta flight is probably affected (because the plane might go from Atl to city A, back to Atl, then connect to cincy or salt lake, onto city B, back to hub).

If you were to design this system "better" you regionalize all flights, and try to "balance" so there is always more than one way to get from A to B, and any person in any city is no more than 2 points removed from any city.

For example
schedule plane 1 to go from Atlanta to JFK to Detroit to Cincy to Vegas to SF
schedule plane 2 to go from Atlanta to Cincinnati to White Plains to Buffalo to Detroit
schedule plane 3 to go from Atlanta to Orlando to Cincinnati to Rochester to Boston
and you keep doing this with planes 4-1000

By skipping cities, you can then alter plans quickly if a plane is either grounded or an airport is closed. Just skip to the next city, so the plane is there (you might have 200 people in wrong city, but because "every" plane skipped that city, you can "add" 2-3 flights to that city once it opens because that airport will have 2-3 extra planes there anyway.

Then layer this so airline knows the Cincy to Islip flight is popular, that lots of cities have a flight to cincy just before the Islip flight leaves (just before=2 hours). If airline knows the Atlanta to JFK flight is usually busy, then it should have lots of flights to and from those cities coming and going.

This system is more complex
but it is much more efficient at same time.

Another example of gained efficiencies

Cincy could fly to Buffalo then Islip
Dayton OH (45 miles north) could fly to Rochester then White Plains
Lexington (100 miles south) could fly to Syracuse then JFK
Louisille (100 miles south) could fly to Albany then Boston
Indianapolis (100 miles North) could fly to Erie then Philly
Columbus (OH)- 100 miles North could fly to Jamestown then Newark

Each of those cities is 1 million plus people, and total population of this region is probably 10 million people. By spreading those flights out to 5 airports, anyone can choose which airport to drive to (outside of Columbus OH driving to Lexington or Louisville- all those cities are close together). Anyone which flies a reasonable amount out of this area knows to always check all 6 airports before scheduling a flight to check for cheaper fares without driving much further (the cincy airport is 35-40 miles from my house, and the Dayton airport is 50 miles the other direction- I have good choices, as long as there is no traffic to Dayton and Dayton (which is a really small airport) has flights available.

I could then route a similar plan to Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Lansing, Saginaw and Toledo with 5 more planes, then go onto Minneapolis, Chicago, Salt Lake, Wisconsin and Iowa with same 5 planes. Those cities reflect another 20M + people, so a person should be able to see they have choices (drive from Columbus to Cincy, Dayton, Toledo to get flight of choice).

Keep repeating this with regions and you get more coverage which is convenient for customers. If the focus is on customers, people will start flying again. This spreads out security checkpoints too- meaning every airport needs to be secure (not just big airports), and employs more people across country.

**cjscully** · 11-19-2010, 01:34 PM

I agree with the OP. Not flying unless I have to. Driving when I can. Taking a train when it's convenient. Flying only when absolutely necessary.

I've had enough (rant)!