h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Concerning the inordinate amount of time needed to "Check in" for a flight - largely, it is all down now to post 9/11 security checks.
Flights to the US (for example)require that all passenger names checked in are sent to the US for scrutiny, so that any undisirables can be picked up PRIOR to the plane deprting. Australian flights, and other destinations are also using this system. Lots more in the future will.

All of your hold loaded baggage is now X-rayed as a matter of course, which takes a staggering amount of time. If any of you have travelled through US airports at all, you will know all about "Assuming the position" while they remove shoes, belts and random cabin baggage to perform tests to establish the presence of explosives.

Another reason getting to your plane takes longer is that canny business types take only cabin baggage, but forget that this too is all X-rayed as you go through security - so they are simply transferring the delay upstairs instead of downstairs for hold baggage.

Another reason is that quite simply, lots more people are travelling now and that in turn means more processing..........

Regarding "Closeout" on a flight. This happens pretty much happens 45 minutes or so before departure, and allows the back room people to look at the seating plan and adjust if necessary. Why would they do this? Well, you may well have a family of five check in just before closeout, and there simply are not five seats together. In an effort to seat them together or at least nearer to each other, the back room "Moves" people about to try and satisfy needs and requirements. It is also at this point that any standby or staff are allocated seating. Final advisement on seating is then notified to the passenger at the departure gate, when you receive a revised boarding pass.

Certain people HAVE to sit in certain parts of a plane - infants for example, have to sit in certain zones as they do not have a seat, so additional emergency oxygen masks (4 above a row of 3 seats for example) are available. Fit and healthy people only are allowed next to overwing emergency exits, and certain medical case passengers need to be near toilets, ailse or a bulkhead for example. Moves of this nature have to be performed in the last 45 minutes to comply with certain H&S reasons.

Overbooking is real science based on many months of historical data and other information - and normally invisible on most flights when they do not travel full. Obviously, this is not always the case and problems do occur when more people turn up for the flight than there are seats.

I am sorry to say though that longer and longer "Check In" times are now here to stay as more and more security checking is performed. People really do need to understand this and plan leaving for the airport accordingly to ensure they get there in time.

>>"All of your hold loaded baggage is now X-rayed as a matter of course, which takes a staggering amount of time."

Certainly, it does need a reasonable amount of time to allow for luggage to be moved around and X-rayed, (and possibly opened if it looks odd), planes loaded, etc, but thinking of the X-ray stage alone, if the quality and number of machines (and operators) isn't high throughput enough to cope with normal-to-heavy traffic, it would cause serious backlogs to build up on a regular basis.

Certainly - but the problem is that having confidential airline knowledge of the various security procedures surrounding this subject, I cannot comment further on what happens to baggage once it leaves the check in area. Sounds all mysterious,I know but the reasons for non disclosure are sound.

Whatever, luggage still goes through a series of processes, all of which need to be capable of handling a high volume of traffic. It's only the time which a process necessarily consumes in order to work that need consistently add to potential delays.
X-rays need only take a few seconds, though I can imagine other operations which might concievably benefit from a little time. However, I have no idea if I'm imagining correctly.

I was travelling short haul fairly extensively before and after 9/11 and didn't really notice much difference. I'll accept that longhaul may have changed, but 9/11 hasn't impacted on the user-experiance much on European short-haul.

>> if people want to fly to England, they're unlikely to decide to fly to Paris and then hitchhike the rest of the way because it's cheaper.

Sure. But the main European hubs at the moment are LHR and Schippol. For some routes you have no choice, you *have* to hub. It was those routes which I was talking about.

Likewise, if it was worth refuelling in a certain jurisdiction, do you honestly think that the airlines wouldn't consider changing shorthaul planes to triangular routes, for example, so instead of flying London-Rome-London-Rome-London(refuel)-Rome they flew London-Rome-Athens(refuel)London-Rome-Athens(refuel).

That was all I was talking about.

Ben

"instead of flying London-Rome-London-Rome-London(refuel)-Rome they flew London-Rome-Athens(refuel)London-Rome-Athens(refuel)."

I thought aircraft generally refuelled after each stage of a journey?

I've never been on that particular route - but I'd have thought that hauling all the fuel you need for a Rome -> Athens flight all the way from London would rather cancel out any savings they'd make from buying it at local prices (If you take the rather niaive figures that excess baggage costs are the actual cost to the airline of moving an extra kg of weight around then moving any more kgs of fuel around than you actually have to for safety reasons would seem a rather bad idea.

Same thing with hubs - how many European airports realistically could cope with the sort of traffic Heathrow or Schippol gets? And could that investment be realistically recovered by a government who'd have to be cheaper than anyone else, in terms of taxes, just to attract custom?

I hate it when people get specific and turn out to be more logical than me!

The point I was trying to make was that avgas would need to be taxed on an international basis, that variations between each jurisdiction would distort the behaviour of airlines. I still think that's true, willful mare that I am.

*How* those distortions would impact the airlines is a different matter, and one which you could spend millons of the currency of your choice on developing models, and still get the predictions wrong.

Ben

Ben, I'd agree that _massive_ differences in taxes might well lead to changes in flights... If Canadian taxes were a lot lower than US taxes then people might decide it's cheaper to fly from the UK to Vancouver rather than Seattle (about 100 miles apart), but in the vast majority of cases, I suspect the public would just pay the extra money to get where they wanted to go and complain about it later - as it'd be the same for _all_ the airlines any changes would have to be 'customer-led'... And as we're all a bunch of lazy so-and-sos I guess it'd take quite a price hike to get us all to boycott a route.

<>

There were noises from the EU about taxing any plane which landed in their jurisdiction, but I haven't heard much about it lately. It would be bad for business, and therefore almost certainly not happen.




<> Neigh bother.

(sorry)

It'd be the longhaul routes that might change - you might get say New York - London - Singapore at the moment, but if the UK taxed at a higher rate to say Stockholm, them the longhaul routes might prefer New York - Stockholm - Singapore, and we'd no longer be able to fly direct from LHR. But it seems that the superhub model is being rejected (slowly) in favour of bigger, beefier planes that can do longhaul routes without the need to stop and refuel and go direct to where you want to go in one hop rather than expecting short hop to superhub - long hop to nearest superhub to destination - short hop to actual destination.

I think we should charge VAT on fuel for aircraft anyway. If less planes land in this country because of it GOOD. There are thousands flying around half-empty, poisoning the atmosphere.

Well yeah, but can we leave until after I've been back to the States in October?

Companies don't pay VAT, Mackay. Or - more accurately - organisations which are VAT registered are able to offset the VAT they pay against the VAT they collect with the differenc going to the revenue. VAT Returns. One of the more devious forms of torture known to man.

Airlines don't pay any VAT at all. One of their perks.

They even escape torture

True Ben, however that only applies to companies registered in this country doesn't it ? And thinking about it non EU nationals don't pay VAT anyway.

Right then. Lets levy the same duty on aircraft fuel we do on petroleum.

Which brings us back to doh, and the fact that to do so would distort how the airlines operate their routes.

B

Hmm, the VAT thing would be virtually impossible to implement I'd have thought...

All that would happen is that the airlines would move offshore, setting up notional fuel distribution and purchasing companys with head offices in Liechtenstien or Andorra or somewhere. The offshore fuel distribution company would buy fuel from the airport's suppliers - thus avoiding VAT, and sell it on to their own airline - again, VAT free. A simple paper trail to avoid paying anything at all.

If BA wasn't registered as a British airline, it wouldn't be able to fly from heathrow to the US. I'd imagine most other European countries have similar arrangements. Also, I'm sure the govt/EU/whoever would find a way round that. I just don't think they will.

The taxing fuel debate is about as intractable as the attempts by the EU to charge airlines for emmissions. The good 'ol US simply refuses to allow US carriers to be charged, so if that comes to pass you will simply have EU airlines saddled with further debt while US legacy carriers wallow in the warm waters of Chapter 11 backruptcy protection with virtually no incentive to become competitive.

Until THAT particular anomoly is (Chapter 11) finally ended, I do not see any hope of fair global emissions charging or fuel taxing taking place.

If the whole EU got together, could they start charging distance-related airport taxes?