In the long-term what will air travel in the future be like? Over the last 30/40 years airplanes have gone from luxury travel to flying buses. Security has gotten much stricter and the level of service on planes seems to have declined. On the other hand no matter how many terrorist plots/attacks there are I can’t see air travel ever becoming less popular. Will high speed trains ever be able to compete with air travel? How severe will restrictions get before they stabalize?
Based on the news today, I see barefoot, naked people in Saran Wrap with their passport numbers tattooed on their butts. They will eat only “space food” from approved airline-supplied “squeezers” and listen to military marches as their only entertainment. They may or may not be sedated to the point of unconsciousness both to a) neutralize threats; and b) stack more efficiently.
Smaller jets, like the Eclipse that was just certified, are the talk of biz right now.
Relatively cheap to make and operate, which makes them useable for “point-to-point” travel out of smaller airports. There are many, many small airports in the nation. Few are used by the airlines, so this could be a big sea change if it pans out.
But the catch is the Air Traffic Control system. Even if we had a big fleet of these small jets out there right now, ready to go as air taxi companies, the ATC system isn’t set up to deal with it.
For the most part, the airlines still fly the old Victor airways, which is based on decades old technology and routing schemes. ATC doesn’t currently have the technology, procedures, or manpower to handle a great number of commercial flights going point-to-point.
That’s slowly changing. And when I say “slowly”, I’m talking glacier speed, which is traditionally how the FAA works.
If we overhauled our rail system, trains would be a great alternative (right now we have trains that will go between 125 and 185 mph but the tracks cannot handle speeds about 60 or so), it is used much more extensively in just about every other industrialized country.
If we could get the political will to get a Boston to Miami East coast high speed train (the modern ones top 300 mph, carry thousands of passengers) a Seattle-San Diego high speed line and a couple of cross country trunk lines and a diverse network of local lines you would have a vibrant rail system. Train stations are located in the city, airports are sometimes an hour outside th city (convenience and door to door time is better for most trips under 1000 miles or so (assuming the high speed trains)); Trains are more energy efficient and operate on electricity (much less energy per person mile and because it operates on electricity, you can use any power source including nuclear power); You can drink at an actual bar in a train and make phone calls from a phone booth, eat a regular meal at a table, change a diaper without getting any on you, and its just more comfortable. It’ll never happen but one can dream.
Someone will develop a metal detector looking doorway that you pass through that will detect anything that can possibly be used for terroristic purposes as well as detect any terroristic intent on the part of anyone passing through and we’ll be back to normal.
Sadly trains are just as susceptible to terror attacks as planes are. Perhaps even moreso and certianly more spectactular when a thousand people being dragged 300 mph go boom.
Nowadays business travel is a way of life. It’s just accepted as fact that when you want to do business, you meet the other person face-to-face. I believe that in the next twenty years, teleconferencing will gradually become the norm, and business travel will almost become a thing of the past. Likewise, I think scientific and academic conferences will gradually be replaced by electronic communications.
Consequently, most passengers will be tourists or people traveling to visit family and friends. That group generally spends less than business travelers, so airlines will have to adjust to lower average fairs.
The whole airport security thing has me a little exasperated and I suspect it may discourage people from flying places for pleasure – at $3.00 gas the time-money economics for domestic travel gets a bit dicie.
Consider, after 9/11 my pocket knife became contraband, then What’s-his-name tries to set fire to a sneaker and I’m wandering around stocking-footed in Lord knows who’s accumulated filth. Somebody in England may have thought about combining nail polish remover and hydrogen peroxide in the departure lounge and I’m required to jettison my toothpaste, tube of Brill Cream and half-liter water bottle. If anybody decides to stuff * plastique* in a bra or a pair of standard Y-fronts we may all be flying not only United but buck naked as well.
I suppose if everybody on the flight is nude and covering their privates with a transparent plastic bag then the airlines can convert overhead storage to seating. Maybe we can be directed to strip naked in front of some federal contract employee and provided with one of those paper hospital gowns to preserve some modicum of modesty.
Mrs G and I are going to France for a 10 day vacation in two weeks. Ten hours in steerage class is bad enough under the take-off-your-shoes system. This is just going to be freaking awful. I’m tired of being told that I should be afraid of everything. I’ve paid for it. I’m going. Screw ‘em.
If this isn’t on topic, I’m sorry. I’m a little upset right now. I’m going to be even more upset if this latest scare turns out to be something like the big terrorist bust in Florida a few weeks ago.
True, but at least there is the advantage that you can’t divert a train into a skyscraper.
On the one hand, I’m inclined to agree with Robert Heinlein’s observation that hard-wired monkey gregariousness will still insist on face-to-face meetings. On the other hand, if security demands that the no-electronics-in-carryon rule be made permanent, business travel as we know it will be seriously reduced – losing several hours of productivity is a major cost, to say nothing of lost/wrecked/stolen computers if they’re put in checked baggage.
Putting the hands together, I see business travel surviving, but limited to really important meetings where people are establishing new social networks. Communication within established social networks will move more toward teleconferencing.
I have friends and relatives in the airline industry. The topic of airline terrorism has been part of many a discussion since 9/11. Gleaning my memory from those discussions, the following are just observations talking with those inside the box …
Passenger security is a joke. It is more eye candy than anything else. It is often quite ineffective, mainly because all airports in this country do not enforce the passenger security rules the same way across the board, almost five years after 9/11. Anyone who travels even just a little bit among several airports can easily spot the differences, and holes in passenger security. All one needs to do is start from the airport with the most security holes. Once you are in, you are in. The 9/11 hijackers did this and got in with no problem. You can still do it today.
In addition, the crap the security folks confiscate doesn’t make sense. The government continues to relax the rules of what you can carry on board. Ask anyone who knits and they can tell you some of those knitting needles will work just as effectively as box cutters. So will an ordinary Bic pen, if know exactly what to do with it.
The current carryon ban with all lotions and gels shouldn’t surprise anyone with some basic chemistry knowledge. Passenger security only screens for nitrates. Yet, as little as a month ago while scanning several technology portal web sites I found an article describing in great detail how to combine ordinary household chemicals (with no nitrate tattletail) and make a simple explosive device. Perhaps this is what UK officials are now looking for with this latest threat.
The issue of check baggage, and the folks on the tarmac who handkle your bags is a whole other story.
About a month ago, the airlines were complaining about the high price of jet fuel. I’m still looking for the cite, but what stands out is the comment that the $100.00 a barrel crude oil price may turn out to be the straw that determines which airlines can afford to keep flying.
A person with the will to do so could fashion an entire arsenal of deadly weapons in about ten minutes from just the matierials around them in the plane itself.
The warden of our local prison has a little museum exhibit in his office of some of the more clever weapons the inmates have fashioned. Deadly things can be made out of the most inoccuous items.
Damn-- hit “submit” by accident.
Really, these measures don’t have a chance in hell of preventing terrorism and I think the FAA is more than aware of that. The purpose is to soothe the fears of the public by demonstrating that they’re “doing something”. For a lot of people, that’s sufficient.
**Spavined Gelding, **I feel your pain. I’ll be flying to Nice via Heathrow in a few weeks. Planning on taking a nice Ativan if I can’t listen to my language files on my iPod, or read.
Or, airlines will add even more electronic gizmos to the airliners. But individual computers, for example, needn’t be added at every seat–just have the tray top double as a keyboard and mouse, a screen on the seat back in front, and the ability to access terrestrial servers at broadband speed. Similarly, they can allow you to access your home music/video library and watch/listen to anything you like.
Also, that broadband access allows you to have video-conferecing as you are in the air.
But for how much longer? Flying sucked to some degree before 9/11. It sucked even more after 9/11. Reid? Flying enters another level of suckitude. It’s going to really start sucking now. No liquids? So no water, soda, coffee to get you through a flight where the airlines don’t even give you enough to drink these days? Heck, no carryon or at least no electronics? Sure, I don’t mind bringing a book, a couple magazines, a couple morning newspapers, and such to read, but having my iPod means that I can listen to something other than engine noise the entire flight. And checking all that stuff? Thefts will increase, I guarantee it. And as crude prices increase, not only will gasoline increase, but so will airplane fuel, and you know those costs get passed along to the consumer. I expect passenger amounts to drop and driving to increase.
At the moment, you can’t have your book, either.
Are they stopping the purchase of reading material once you have cleared security? Because there are all sorts of vendors inside terminals to provide liquids, reading material, snacks and the like, so people aren’t being tortured any more than normal. You just can’t bring in stuff from home. No hu-hu…we’ll adapt.
Ironic since flying is still safer(and cheaper) than driving and likely to remain so. I don’t think our rail network will ever get any better. It’ll be along time before things like internet acess trickles down to coach and even then it’ll be very expensive. And I’m confused are books and reading material now banned as carryons? Compusory nudity might just be the thing to scare off Islamic terrorists :rolleyes: .
James Fallows predicted back in 2001 that short-hop “air taxis” would be the wave of the future. See his book Free Flight: Inventing the Future of Travel.
Have you seen most of what’s available to read once you’ve cleared security?
Look, if I have to pay for a bottle of water instead of bringing one from home, I can live with it. I see no reason to ban things like books. As for banning electronics, that will not go over well.
Still safer, sure. Cheaper? It’s always depended on the distance and the route and I’m not sure it’ll stay cheaper for much longer. Let’s say, just for the heck of it, I want to go somewhere I could either drive to in one very long day or I could fly. Let’s say I want to go to Vegas (flying out of El Paso) over Labor Day weekend, leaving Saturday and returning Tuesday. Ignoring the fact that it could actually take me longer if I have to go through Denver, Dallas, Chicago, or so on, I’m looking at:
American: $480, have to go through Dallas
Southwest: $228, actually get to go nonstop or at worst through Phoenix
United: $198, surprising me. I’m not used to United being that cheap.
US Air: $177, again, not bad, but I refuse to fly US Air.
Delta: $218
Travelocity kicks out a couple flights even lower than US Air but only by $20 or so. And remember we still have taxes and fees.
Now with driving: I’m looking at about 800 miles, which I can knock out in 10-12 hours if I can average 75+ and don’t stop that often. If I can get 25 miles to the gallon, that’s 32 gallons. At three bucks a gallon, that’s $96 one-way. Sure, I’ve spent a lot of time driving, but depending on how long the flights are, what the layover time is, how early I have to get there because of security and the related vagaries of travel, it could just about break even.