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I mentioned this today to an associate, they still fly to conferences but now they're going to start to fedex their luggage. Walk on the plane, walk off, have your toothpaste delivered right to the hotel. That's a great idea, no hauling luggage to/from the plane, on the cab, down the block, etc.
Anyone else starting to change their flying behavior?
Keep in mind the govt has thought of it all. A person traveling without luggage will probably raise a flag because it's very unusual to not have any baggage... think about it. Who goes on a trip but doesn't need anything at the end of the flight.... hmmmm
@Swanny007, a lot of people do short trips, or trips home, with very little luggage. You also,probably need to have something in case the flight gets diverted, delayed or cancelled and you end up somewhere you did not plan to be.
Now though, I find it a real pain - not being on the plane and the flight itself, but all the rigmarole you have to go through - the long queue's, the extended check-in times.
Travel used to be about pleasure - the trip itself was supposed to be very much part of the adventure. The first priority of the travel firm was the welfare and comfort of the passenger. Now though, it's about budget carriers cramming as many people into as small a space as possible. Of extra charges for this, that and the other, so much so that the rule of thumb is that taxes and add-ons equate financially to a third person travelling in a party of two.
Just before Christmas, we took an international train from the Netherlands to neighbouring Belgium for a long weekend in Brussels. We crossed international borders.
We didn't have to check-in two hours before departure. We didn't have to queue and hand over our luggage and answer security questions whilst doing so. There weren't any weight restrictions on our luggage. We didn't have to have our passports scrutinised, be body searched or body scanned. There were no biometric checks.
There were no restrictions on where we could roam in the terminal - no controlling line that, once crossed, we could not return from. No extended waiting or queueing in the departure lounge. No tiny seats with insufficient leg room. No restrictions on what food or liquids we could take onboard. No little plastic bags or containers that any limited quantities of foods or liquids had to be packed in.
When we arrived at our destination, we didn't have to wait for our luggage to appear on the carrousel, and could forgo the pleasure of queueing yet again at immigration control. Oh, and we didn't have to run the gauntlet of Customs.
The journey time from Amsterdam to Brussels by train is a little over two and a half hours. Door-to-door, about an extra hour in total. Had we done it by plane there would have been an extra two hours to allow for check-in and typically an extra hour from hitting the tarmac to walking out of the terminal with luggage. Add travelling time to and from terminal and there's another couple of hours.
Total travel time by train - approx three and a half hours door-to-door.
Total travel time by plane - approx six hours (including a flight time of 50 minutes) door-to-door.
Distance travelled - approx 200 km + door-to-door travel.
I have to say that nowadays the plane is a pain.
Syzygy
But in reply to the question about whether my travel plans will change. No they won't.
Oh, and does anyone else smell anything fishy about the whole Detroit fiasco? We had hardly heard anything about Yemen until then, nor did I know AQ had chapters!
yes, the only time i have been pulled over at heathrow by the customs and taken into a back room was when i flew NY to London with no luggage.... actually it was quite an interesting experience, although of course i was unstressed as i knew i wasn't up to 'no good'
Take the train whenever feasible. Drive the car when that doesn't work. Fly only when time is critical and the distance is long - 1000+ miles.
I wish the US would invest more in passenger trains. Of course, I suppose they then could become subject to innane security requirements as well.
But will they be brave enough to face the new Airlines/Custom/Emigration policies?
The El Al model get brought up a lot, but El Al is a small airline flying to a limited number of international destinations from a single hub. The time and manpower required to do things like hand check carry-on luggage at the gate are totally unfeasible for a big international carrier like BA or Korean Air or United.
Part of the problem with U.S. airline security is that policy is being dictated by politicians, not security experts. Most of the electorate flies very rarely, maybe twice a year domestically and even less internationally; the dog and pony show of scans and searches shows them the government is "doing something" about terrorism even though it's actually not.
Of course, if you fly once a year, an extra hour at security doesn't impact you in the same way it affects me, who has to clear security 3-4 times a month.
The same politicians attack profiling (another El Al tactic) as racist, which contributes further to long lines as security personnel rifle through the bags of every grandmother and toddler in line on fairness grounds.
But driving or taking the train from Washington to Boston (8-9 hours), much less to California (several days, with trains delayed 4-20 hours), or Tokyo (don't care for such long tunnels myself) isn't an option for most travelers— even with high speed rail.
The 8 hour daytime return journey was a bit of a bind but with a power socket for the laptop and a couple of films on DVD plus free broadband and frequent free coffee it was better than driving.
although of course i was unstressed as i knew i wasn't up to 'no good
A lot of people who were not up to no good have had serious problems in the UK because they look suspicious: missing for hours with worried families not knowing why they had disappeared, computers seized, being arrested and hand-cuffed etc.
Yet everyday millions of people go by train with no security whatsoever.
Exactly. I was actually recently on vacation and had just gotten off the plane, and reading Taleb's The Black Swan. Then the Christmas Day bomb scare happened, and every idiotic response he talked about in the book, i.e. people reacting only to recent events instead of trying to anticipate the range of things that could possibly happen, were exemplified by the government response to the attempted plane bombing.
Even the part about not letting people use the bathrooms the last hour of flight. So what is magical about the last hour of flight? What is even so special about planes versus buses or trains or parades or football games? They are only reacting to what has happened in the recent past and instead of anticipating the range of events that could happen in the future.
How many people die in car accidents or from cancer each day compared to terrorists attacks? The government is reacting to one time media news events instead of looking at how can we take X dollars and save the most number of lives given a finite number of resources. If there was ever a political party based on sheer logic and efficient allocation of limited resources instead of knee jerk reactions they would always get my vote.
So what is magical about the last hour of flight?
If a plane hits a building it is bigger news than just landing in the sea. However, the plot to blow up a number of planes over the Atlantic could have caused a huge amount of disruption. If planes started to fall of the radar they would have had to ground all flights between the US and other destinations?
I didn't have any luggage with me aside from my laptop case.
In the laptop case, aside from the laptop, I had a pair of socks, a t-shirt, underwear, a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. Basically, I had all that I need to stay one night in a hotel before renting a car to drive to Delaware. (I was entering the country through JFK.)
The CBP agents grilled me for close to an hour asking how come I don't have any luggage.
I actually had to show them a couple of my sites (I'm not kidding) as proof that I really have an on-line business, and that I'm not tied to any one location, and that's simply the lifestyle I choose to maintain.
If something doesn't compute in their heads when they hear your story, you need to prove to them that you aren't carrying drugs in your stomach or anything of that sort.
Last time I've flown internationally was in November. And judging by what I read, I'm going to try my best not to fly anywhere any time soon.
Except
1) the jury failed to find that that had actually been planned (they were convicted of plotting a more ordinary bomb)
2) the plan was almost certainly infeasible in the first place - its hard enough to synthesise explsoives in a lab, let alone a plane toilet.
3) the plotters were a bunch of idiots who could not blow up an explosives factory - a bit like the ones who tried to blow up cars packed gas cyliders and only succeeded in burning one of themselves.
@Jane_Doe, government responses are
1) Planned to look good, rather than achieve anything - its all "security theatre"
2) Exactly what the terrorists want: they want publicity, and the governments are quite happy to give it to them.
