> You can't remove the part where you have to travel to an airport, generally out of town.
Some airports have good connections. In the last month I've been to Berlin and Brussels, and in each case my train journey into the city was about 15-20 minutes (caveat: I happened to be going to the right side of Berlin for the airport, and the Brussels train, while central, was _bizarrely_ expensive).
Of course, some airports, not so much. Grumble mutter Dublin (there is some hope of a rail line, or possibly _two_ rail lines, in about 2040, but until then it's a choice of painfully slow standard buses (1 hour into city), or expensive unreliable express buses (25 mins into city, if they show up)).
But for many routes, really security, and the sheer poor layout of the airport, is the big slowdown. My favourite for this is London City; the (small, weird) plane lands, you walk out a door, and you are at a DLR stop.
Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that.
> Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should
There was a company about 15 years ago that developed a double ended jetway so you could load and unload from the front and back simultaneously. They said it shaved about 18 minutes from loading and unloading (combined). On the average flight this would be the equivalent of going about 100mph faster for seemingly a simple change.
They installed a few in Denver and I believe in Calgary. Unfortunately one in Denver had a problem and collapsed and hit the wing of a plane, and so they ripped them all out and no one ever tried again.
Ryanair loads its planes from both ends in most airports (except in airports where they're required to use a jetway). It _helps_ (I was recently on a Ryanair flight from Brussels, a mandatory-jetway airport, and it was noticeably slower than usual to load) but it's still a lot slower than you'd hope.
Ryanair actually orders specialised 737s with built-in airstairs and a few other modifications to facilitate this.
This only really works for 737-sized planes and down, though, where air-stairs are an easy option (AFAIK even A320s can be a bit of a stretch, as they're significantly taller than 737s).
Yeah I've done that on a few euro airlines. It's definitely faster to load, but usually you have to take a bus to the plane, which adds a lot of time and hassle that you don't have with a gate. I still really think that the double ended gate is probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of speeding up air travel. The only reason I can think of that we don't have it is that you can pay more to be at the front of the plane, so a lot of the benefit goes to the lowest paying passengers. I would still think that this would improve the turn around time for the airplane so that the airline could get more utilization, but perhaps loading/unloading is not the critical path anymore in turning around the airplane.
> It's definitely faster to load, but usually you have to take a bus to the plane, which adds a lot of time and hassle that you don't have with a gate.
Ah, that depends on the airport. Haven’t been on one of those in a few years; I think Ryanair and friends managed to grab a lot more proper gate space during Covid when the higher-end airlines were practically giving it away.
(Years ago, I was on a Ryanair flight to Brussels airport which used a jet bridge, because it’s mandatory there… But the jet bridge was in the middle of nowhere, served by a bus. Half-convinced Ryanair does this sort of thing deliberately, to live up to their brand image of being quite annoying.)
> but perhaps loading/unloading is not the critical path anymore in turning around the airplane.
It _definitely_ is, at least for short-haul stuff.
> But for many routes, really security, and the sheer poor layout of the airport, is the big slowdown
Washington Dulles aka IAD is a fine example. It has a vast security area below deck for regular folks and a smaller one up top where all the Clear and Pre flyers go. That should be inverted.
Then, after security, passengers must walk 300m and change levels to catch a small shuttle train. Or, to take the special mobile lounge bus things. If you take the train, it drops you off 500m from the gate area, so you have tonget off the train, climb the stairs, walk through a tunnel, climb the escalator, and then walk the remainder of the terminal to your gate. It is absolutely laughable how poor Dulles is, esp considering its importance to United.
> Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that.
I don't know why there isn't just a bunch of seats in the terminal laid out the same way as the plane. Sit there and wait, and then when it's time to board, the people at the end get on first, tada, everyone is boarded and we're not stopping each other from getting in.
It's because the overhead space is limited. Airlines have spent decades trashing, losing, and delaying checked luggage, so everyone tries to cram everything into the overheads. Since there's never enough room for everyone to do that, higher classes have to board first so they can. It would be nice if first class could at least be at the back so the line didn't completely stall in reverse order, but they also want to get out (the front) first, and you will never convince the other passengers to wait for that.
Some airports have good connections. In the last month I've been to Berlin and Brussels, and in each case my train journey into the city was about 15-20 minutes (caveat: I happened to be going to the right side of Berlin for the airport, and the Brussels train, while central, was _bizarrely_ expensive).
Of course, some airports, not so much. Grumble mutter Dublin (there is some hope of a rail line, or possibly _two_ rail lines, in about 2040, but until then it's a choice of painfully slow standard buses (1 hour into city), or expensive unreliable express buses (25 mins into city, if they show up)).
But for many routes, really security, and the sheer poor layout of the airport, is the big slowdown. My favourite for this is London City; the (small, weird) plane lands, you walk out a door, and you are at a DLR stop.
Boarding also always takes far longer than you'd imagine it should, mostly due to people being people. In principle you could board an airliner in a couple of minutes, but only with perfect behaviour from all passengers, so good luck with that.