One thing is for sure, air travel is a terribly painful and uncomfortable experience compared to what it was a generation ago and far more time consuming due to endless security checks, pay extra for absolutely everything, too few staff, no meals, having to arrive at your flight 3 hours early as opposed to 40 minutes like it use to be, and being crammed in like a bloody sardine.
Air travel use to be so pleasant and now it's a painful and exhausting experience that only Chinese Water Torture could match. |
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The airlines were deregulated by Carter in 1979. People who worship Ronald Reagan claim that Reagan deregulated the airlines but it was Carter. Look it up, flyboy.
Before that, the major airlines were required to provide direct domestic flights to all cities of a particular size. This meant there would always be at least one daily non-stop between, say, San Antonio and Columbus, OH and between Portland, OR and Memphis. After deregulation, the various airlines all reconfigured their service around hub and spoke systems. The airlines that could not establish a midwest hub in Chicago or Atlanta gave birth to the brief hubs that once lorded over various second-tier airports. The most notorious was Delta's Cincinnati hub, which saw everything that would have come through Chicago instead routed through CVG. This made no difference for connecting travelers but it enabled Delta to price gouge Cincinnati's customers since there was practically no competing airline at the airport. Then when Delta suddenly pulled out in 2005 all of the businesses (especially the Japanese businesses like Toyota) that had established major offices in Cincinnati in the 80s and 90s started to leave. St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, etc. all went through this routine with various airlines, many of them now defunct. The airports were expanded for these hubs then the airlines skipped town and left those cities holding the bag. Cincinnati is down from 500+ daily flights including about 10 internationals to maybe 150 daily flights and just one Air France flight to Paris which remains so that GE Aviation can trade spare parts and specialized personnel with Airbus. Luckily, the huge excess capacity at CVG lured DHL to the airport and they operate a 1,000+ man operation there that sees several dozen domestic flights converge at nightfall. Everything is sorted and then shipped either to Frankfurt or Hong Kong. |
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Air travel can be dirt cheap if you know how to do it properly. When it was a luxury good it was known to have luxurious qualities. It's like complaining that a base model Nissan doesn't feel like the top level cadillacs of yesteryear. They aren't the same thing. If you want those qualities, you can still get them, you just gotta pay the premium. (First / business class)
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And that's what I think is great. There's no way I could go on 3 leisure trips a year if |I had to pay even premium economy.
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It's interesting to look at the big picture of how air travel is changing, with the decline of the 747 and A380 in favor of smaller yet much more fuel efficient planes with long range.
The old model was the funnel people into hub airports where they would change planes to a jumbo for the long haul flight. Now they are moving to smaller flights and flying longer flights from smaller airports. For example, my home airport of Raleigh-Durham has direct flights to London and Paris. I think design-wise we will see a focus on future designs to maximize range and fuel efficiency and we will see a lot more flights between smaller markets such as something like Nashville-Stuttgart or Birmingham-Birmingham haha. Also, probably designs with more modular interiors that can quickly be changed seating arrangements based on AI analyzed trends. If a flight starts selling more first class seats, a quick change will allow them to add in more first class seating during a turn around. (just spit-balling an idea). |
^^^ The Chicago-Asia flights that used to be 747s are all 777s now. Still a very big comfortable plane, twin isles. It's just that the 777 is a much more efficient airframe.
For the form factor, it's just that we're constrained by physics. Airliners are very conservative vehicles. They are passively stable. They can glide without power. They are simple and strong. Yes there are innovative solutions to the aerodynamic problems. But they weigh more per passenger, and/or they are dynamically stable. Meaning they drop like a rock if the computer crashes. Personally I think that's what's holding back the flying wing designs, which is the option most likely to replace the 707 form. But no one wants to roll the dice. |
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The amount of time where the plane could go supersonic isn't worth the cost. |
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yep including frequent flyer/preferred passenger options to shorter lines. |
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This just about sums it up, including why planes don't fly just under the speed of sound.
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Supersonic Concorde could fly again thanks to quieter low-boom technology
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/...om-technology/ Quote:
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Australia-UK: First non-stop flight arrives in London from Perth
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43530332 Quote:
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Zunum Aero’s Hybrid Electric Airplane Aims To Rejuvenate Regional Travel
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...egional-travel Quote:
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