Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yizahi | Hacker News Reader

Author is implying that he only fears whatever time he needs to wait for checked bag. I find it ridiculous - air travel is already an all day long enterprise even on short flights - get to the airport, then minimum 2 hours for all checks, then flight itself, then check on arrival (up to 1 hour), then baggage if any and then get out of the airport. Baggage wait time is usually a rounding error in all this. What is really important is that people usually carry fragile and expensive things in hand luggage and is forced to check it in there is a high probility of it breaking or theft. This is a real reason for fighting for overhead space. Also losing all your luggage (checked in and forced checked in) or even delaying it by few days is significantly more painful if only one item was lost/delayed, especially if it was a trip from home to another place (not reverse).

View on HN

I’m assuming you don’t fly regularly for business. If you did you wouldn’t call it an “all day enterprise” as pretty often you’re flying and actually having the meetings on the same day.

When you do fly constantly for short business trips the suggestion of adding checked bags to the mix becomes ridiculous. It adds time and unpredictability both before and after the flight, as check in time is more strict with a bag.

Repeat the process a bunch of times and have the errant 40 minute wait for your bag on a delayed flight that landed at midnight, or have it lost (even once in 50 trips can be a “regular” occurance), or have your flight cancelled but see another flight you could jump on instead, and you’ll realize having checked bags is a massive liability for business traveling.

I very rarely fly for business and usually it is a long process - 4 hour flight plus customs plus far away airports. I saw "Up In The Air" (very cool movie) as suggested below but it is still unconnected to me, can't imagine working that way. But yeah, I suppose short and regular business trips in the same day with actual business, have different requirements.

Indeed, but travelling business you usually aren't facing the same issues on bin space

Expense policies are as often as not economy for short haul.

Do employers actually force employees to buy basic economy tickets? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but so far, my employer doesn't allow those tickets - most of us have to fly "lowest reasonable fare", which generally means within 20% of the lowest normal economy fare for the route.

Have a friend who's company made him fly out on a Sunday afternoon (thus having to pay him both overtime and a per diem) and stay at a hotel (which the company obviously paid for), because there where only business class tickets left for the Monday morning flight and company had a strict "no business class" policy. The price difference between the two tickets was less than $100.

Yeah, I've seen similar stupidity at my employer. Most recently a trip to San Diego (from DC) for a convention. Convention was Sunday-Wednesday and travel was only approved on those days.

Not only were the Saturday fares less expensive by about $300, which was roughly in line with hotel cost, they were also direct. All the Sunday flights had layovers in the normal mid-western hubs. Seemed like a no-brainer to allow the Saturday travel, but nope, it required special approval from a VP.

Not basic economy, but economy for short domestic is common. That still could mean boarding group 5 out of 6 or so for travelers with no airline status.

A lot of corporate employers have an internal travel agent. I.e. you tell them where/when and they book the tickets for you.

Also in European shorthaul a lot of airlines don't even have business and for those that do you're normally looking a lot more than 20% more than the base fare.

It strongly depends on whether you're a "few times a year leisure traveller", or "multiple times a week business traveller".

First few minutes of "Up in the air" will give you a good idea of how strongly business travellers optimize. At my peak when I was doing 75+ flights/year, I would leave home at 7am to be on the 8am flight - this included taxi, security, boarding, and 20 minute margin for unexpected issues.

I pack light and tight into a backpack that goes underneath my seat, because the flights on Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal Canadian corridor are 80+% priority status, daily travellers, and they ferociously fight for overhead space.

Put it a different way - a 20 minute annoyance once a year is, bad but meh. 20 minute annoyance twice a week for a year - that's FULL WORK WEEK lost.

I fly out of Atlanta (the world’s busiest airport). While it’s usually not that bad, I would never take a chance on arriving less than the recommended two hours.

It's two intersecting curves:

- Risk, which is inversely related to early arrival

- Wasteage, which is directly related to early arrival

The slope of the curves is largely impacted by:

- Personal risk tolerance; but also

- Frequency of flying

Personally:

* When I fly for vacations, I am "arrive early and wait" type of person - typically 3 hrs or more. I have no problems being relaxed and reading at the airport :).

* But when I fly weekly for work, I just can't _afford_ to be that early. The math is simple - 2hrs early times two flights a week times 45 weeks (assume few weeks of vacation or working remotely etc) is... 180 hours wasted at the airport. Holly crap, I just spent a month of work at the terminal!

If I only arrive one hour before flight, I reduce that number by 90hrs. That's more than two work weeks saved - for how much additional risk have I taken? How many incidents will I incur? If I miss one out of every X flights due to reduced margin, am I still ahead?

A lot of it is down to routine. I believe (but don't have math for this) that I have higher risk on my vacation trips, even with increased margin & time, as I don't have the routine down. Whereas on my weekly trips, 15 minutes is plenty.

(I fly out of Pearson, which is about half the yearly throughput of Atlanta. Over 7 years, I have never missed a flight due to these margins. I did once miss a flight because I forgot my wallet - since then I have two wallets: one stays in the travel backpack, always; and one is in my pants. I like systems :)

I just re-watched first 10 minutes of Up-in-the-air to see if my hypothesis holds true. I wasn't as frequent of a flyer when I first saw it, but now I am even more convinced it's filmed by somebody who understands :).

It's about: 1. There existing a system 2. You understanding the system, thoroughly 3. You using the system, thoroughly

Watch: he walks through the metal detector at specific pace, with his body in specific pose, to reduce the risk of accidental set of. We all do it subconsciously, after a while. He knows what's in which pocket. He doesn't fumble for ID, search for boarding pass, it's all always within subconscious reach. He packs consistently, knows how many bins he'll need and how to unpack and pack for the security line. He has priority, status, pre-check, and everything else he needs. His demeanor is low threat, he obeys the requirements, and reduces friction efficiently at every step.

Simply put he doesn't need two hours of margin, and yet his risk is slim to none :>

[and this is why on the other hand,when I travel for vacation, I do need hours of margin:). The system is disrupted and efficiencies are lost]

Makes sense. But there is also the unknown of traffic to get to the airport which could vary as much as an hour. But, I guess that can be partially alleviated if I just drove to the park and ride and took the train. But even that could vary a lot as far as I live from the nearest train station.

Also, if you’re waiting at the airport for an additional hour, is that time wasted? If you were working at home during that hour or doing something for leisure, couldn’t you do the same at the airport?

Good point: * Monday mornings (outbound), for most people with relatively fixed sleeping habits, going an hour earlier to the airport (say, depart home 5am instead of 6 am for 7am flight, or equivalent) is an hour's sleep lost which cannot be substituted at the airport, and reduces your effectiveness for the day.

* On return legs, in principle you can substitute airport time for work time, but in my experience it's never one to one exchange.

Re traffic: I agree with you in principle; but I find traffic is unpredictable for changing destinations. For repeatable fixed-circumstances situations, less so - i.e. On Monday morning, at 6am, from home to airport, on same route, traffic is actually fairly predictable over time.

My good friend actually came to visit me recently and they "lost" her checked bag. I say "lost" here because they "knew" where it was, but the plane kept getting delayed. Apparently it ended up on a separate plane that happened to arrive at the same airport. They originally told us to wait at the airport until it arrived, assuring us it was only going to be another 30 minutes. We ended up leaving, without her bag, 2 hours later. They said they would call us when it arrived. No such luck. We went back to the airport in the morning and it had just shown up and nobody knew why they were holding it. I understand if they misplace the bag, but to string us along for almost a whole day waiting on a call from them that never came is really just a miserable experience.

Tell the airline where you're staying and where they can deliver the bag. Ask them the policy on reimbursing the purchases that you'll need to make to get by in the meantime.

I've had an airline drive our bags 50+ miles to deliver them, but they are not likely to open with that as their initial offer.

I had a trip where one (of several) bags got diverted and ended up arriving a day late - Delta got it to us ~125 km away in time for the second day of skiing. I don't remember if they comped the ski gear we bought in the interim, though...

Honestly, I will have to try this. I am a pretty passive person so my head usually goes to "just nod and say ok a bunch" during confrontations like this but the luggage experience had me pretty upset. Thank you for the advice!

As someone that flies short haul in europe fairly often by far the biggest factor for me is having to wait for my bag. Not only is it the entirely random amount of time it takes (from the luggage beating you there through to the best part of an hour) but it means I can't book an uber until after i've picked it up / anyone picking me up has gone over the N minutes free / I miss a train and have to wait 30 minutes for the next one.

Time on the flight seated is not lost. I can work from a laptop, read, sleep etc. Many airports outside of peak you can comfortably arrive less than 30 mins before the flight (easy if there is reliable public transport, quiet roads, your company is paying or its a €30 flight so you don't care too much if you miss it and have to get the next one).

Whereas the valuables problem is easily fixed. Phone in pocket and 14" laptop sleeve fits in the back of the seat or both in a much smaller bag.

> its a €30 flight

Oh my Europe!

Things like this are definitely all in a person's head.

Houston airport used to have lots of complaints from people about bag wait times.

To resolve the problem they moved the arrival gates as far away from the baggage claim as possible, making people have to walk 12 times farther to get their bags.

Complaints about waiting for checked bags dropped to near zero.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waitin...

That's brilliant. Dark, but brilliant.

I've often thought, waiting at the baggage carousel, that I'd be willing to unload other peoples' bags just to get mine out faster. But really it's just because waiting is so terrible.

I fly Berlin - Warsaw (my two "hometowns") quite regularly. Takes me 15-20 minutes to get to the airport, then around 10-20 minutes inside, thanks to the awesome Tegel airport. I usually leave my flat about an hour before the flight. Frequently end up with 10+ minutes buffer of idle waiting.

Around 50 minutes later I land in Warsaw (another awesome international airport). Another 20-25 minutes later and I'm at my mother's house. All in all under 3 hours time.

Just for reference the same route by car takes about 5h and by train around 7h.

I know my example is very specific and understand it cannot apply to most of the flights but still.

I fly Gdansk-London Luton, less frequently these days, but I used to do it every week. It was definitely not an all day enterprise. I even managed to get back on the same day few times.

To get to the airport on time I need to leave home at 4am. Not exactly convenient, but doable. A bit over an hour to get to the airport, then I have about 45 min at the airport to get through security, eat breakfast, wait for my flight etc. 6am flight leaves, just under 2 hours later it lands at Luton, but there is a 1h time difference so it lands at 7am local time. Now the worst part of the whole journey, getting through UK customs - if I'm lucky it may take 10 minutes. Otherwise if lots of planes just landed there is a huge queue and an hour long wait. However, it is very rare that I would leave the destination airport later than 8am local time. Then there is a 10 min bus ride to the Luton Parkway train station. Fast trains to London leave every 10-15min. I'm usually in central London no later than 8:30-45. Just enough time to get a coffee before starting work at 9am.

And if you're travelling into a country with painful immigration processes (e.g. USA), the time spent waiting for your baggage can be the difference between a 15mn cue at immigration and a 2h cue at customs EDIT: the big queue is at customs not immigration

Traveling to U.S.A. is a pretty unique experience, depending on your visa/status. And I don't mean it in a good way... With my E-2 visa crossing immigration at JFK is anywhere between 20 minutes (very lucky) and 1 hour. To be fair it has improved massively, it used to be 2+ hours. In any case my checked baggage will be waiting for me, not the other way around.

But check-in is far worse: nobody knows how to handle an E-2 visa. Last time I went to Japan it took 4 JAL employees 20 minutes to figure out which numbers to enter where on their system. Still two hours less than Air France that may or may not have someone to take care of passengers that cannot check in on their DIY terminals... Hence I try to avoid Air France when flying to US, even though otherwise I quite enjoy flying with them.

But really, there's no reason why waiting for checked luggage should be a thing. I'm always thoroughly impressed when flying domestic Japanese flights: get off the plane, walk to the luggage pick-up area, pick up luggage. No waiting time: checked bags are already there. I don't even know how they do that. Aéroport de Paris should send a team or two over there and study hard...

I used to fly semi-regularly on an E-3 visa. The online check-in and airport kiosks usually couldn't accept it, but the customer service staff never had a problem with it.

Arriving in the US was a whole other matter. They often weren't familiar with the E-3 rules for things like whether the 2 years starts when the visa was issued or date of first arrival. They also wrote the wrong visa type one time, which would have affected my employment authorization. Had to guide them thru it a few times.

At every airport I've flown into in the US baggage claim is after immigration.

You're right, I was conflating immigration and customs

I think you get your baggage after immigration.

>> minimum 2 hours for all checks

You don’t fly much.

I generally leave my home 1 hour before the flight then leave the landing airport immediately since I don't have checked in baggage. The entire endevour is around 1.5 hours + flight duration.

Even when I was flying out of ORD, I doubt I ever arrived more than 30 minutes before boarding started, and I was always early enough to grab a bite and chill for a bit. In DCA I tend to clock the "door to gate" time at 35-40 minutes, and that's from out in Bethesda.

Nowadays I probably arrive 15 minutes before boarding to my local airport, which is tiny, so it's never a problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com