
We're Too Cheap to Fly Faster - msrpotus
https://medium.com/we-live-in-the-future/7885a299bca2
======
TheAnimus
It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect.

If I have to be at Heathrow 90 min before departure, and it takes me 45 min to
drive there, or 90 min on public transport, then at the other end it takes 30
mins for my bag to get on the belt, clear port control, and another 30-60 min
to get to the city. I have a good 4 hours of fixed time involved with my
flight. If the flight is just 8 hours, making it 7 hours isn't really going to
change things, I've still lost the most of the day.

So I'd sooner be able to sleep comfortably (ie space!) or be able to do some
work (11 vaio Pro, 22 hours battery).

Then we have the issue that even going supersonic, we can't just upsticks and
do it. We have to get out to see. Climbing to FL390 takes a lot of time,
descending from it does as well, otherwise people generally find it rather un-
appealing. Add in busy hub airport traffic and we've got at least 2 hours that
we can't really speed up.

So our 12 hour total journy (4 hours travelling too / waiting at airports, 6
hours of cruise, 2 hours of holding an NDB) speeding up that 6 hours, doesn't
have much effect. Hell go nuts, make it take 2 hours, go for mach 3. It is
still going to take me, door to door, 8 hours. 8 vs 12 for the cost of that
just isn't going to be worth it. Because ultimately I'll have my own work
schedule, I'm not rich enough to have a private jet, and the stuff I fly you
wouldn't want to be in for more than 4 hours anyway (well the fuel would run
out too). So that means I want a regular, frequent service. I don't care that
superfastjet leaves everyday at 1pm. I need to be around till 5pm. Obviously
the geek in me would take the fast one, but I couldn't do that everytime.

 __TLDR __It isn 't just about being cheaper. It is recognising the
deminishing impact speed is having on being the deciding factor. We look at
door to door time, not cruise performance. We want a frequent schedule, not
one speedbird a day.

~~~
bergie
Exactly the reason why the (much slower) train often makes more sense. Sure,
the train from Amsterdam to Berlin is six hours. But you only have to be at
the station to catch it before it leaves, and it both leaves and arrives right
in the center.

We tried this returning from a conference there last fall, and the hotel-door-
to-home-door advantage of flying was less than 30 minutes. And on train there
was more space, better food, and a bar. Not to mention that there was power
and nobody told me to shut down my laptop at any point :-)

~~~
city41
This works better in Europe than it does in America. As most trips here on
train or car take multiple days. Where as you can fly anywhere in the country
in one day. Once you cross into multi-day territory, the train is often too
impractical to be used. Which is a real shame, as I really enjoy travelling by
train.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The US is large but our trains really do suck and up until the 2010 elections
we were on track to build a regional fast speed train system that would
connect Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and then east to DC and NYC. Tea
Party governors and other GOP obstructionism killed it, especially in Ohio,
Wisconsin and Florida.

NYC to LA shouldnt be our metric for everything. A lot of travel is regional.
Why do I need to get up at 5am in Chicago to get on a 10am flight that lasts 2
hours to DC? Or the 30 minutes to milwaukee? Or the 1.5 hr flight to Kansas
City? With all the hassle of TSA, airport madness, restrictions, and the
horrible crampedness of flying? Chicago > DC is about the same distance as
Madrid to Paris. Sure, the train will take longer, but it sure beats flying.

~~~
gwright
> our trains really do suck

You mean passenger trains. For the most part, the US rail network was
constructed for and is primarily used for cargo transportation, where it
excels.

The perpetual comparison of the US (cargo) train network to the other
passenger train networks (Europe, Japan, China) is a tedius and misguided
apples to oranges comparison.

Most of these comparisons blatently ignore the fact that population density is
radically different between the US and these other systems, which is an
important criteria in understanding the time/economic tradeoffs.

I like train travel a lot and living in the New York to Boston corridor I've
always had easy access to commuter trains, the New York and Boston subway
systems, and Amtrak for longer regional travel. Regardless, I don't think
passenger rail makes much economic sense outside high-density areas and even
then only survives with dubious tax subsidies.

~~~
ericd
The entire interstate highway system is extremely heavily subsidized (along
with gasoline). I'd be interested to see how it would compare with passenger
trains without the subsidies, but I suspect it's not as lopsided as we think
when it comes to a marginal passenger.

~~~
gwright
I understand what you are saying about the highway system being subsidized,
but I'm not sure I understand your reference to gasoline.

Private energy companies explore, extract, refine, and sell gasoline, with all
sorts of taxes (as opposed to subisidies) along the way. What subsidies are
you refering to for gasoline?

~~~
ericd
The government creates foreign policy around the maintenance of oil supplies,
which has a very large cost, and is largely a gift to the oil companies. This
is reflected in income taxes rather than in the cost of gasoline. There are
also large tax breaks given to oil companies. Domestic fossil fuels like coal
and natural gas don't get quite the same treatment, since we have plenty.

------
bradleyjg
Let's run some numbers.

It looks like the average round trip the last year it flew on the New York to
London route on the Concorde was $12,000 and lasted 3.5 hours. You could fly
that route on a regular plane for around $1,000 in a trip that takes 7.5
hours.

So the implied value of your time if you took the Concorde was around $2,750 /
hr. If you net that up to a standard work year (2000 hours) it's $5.5 million.
1 in 1000 households in the US declare income of more than $2 million a year.

It's not that we are too cheap, it's that we aren't rich enough.

~~~
seren
It is similar to the numbers calculated by Ivan Illich regarding car usage in
the 1970's. If you take into account the car price, gasoline, insurance,
repairs, etc, and the time spent to earn that amount of money, the average
speed of a car for a worker was around a few miles per hour, so not better
that simply walking or bycycling. It is an unorthodox but quite interesting
perspective on the counter productivity of complex industrial societies. The
better your pay is, the higher is your "average speed". The Concord is only
the most extreme example of this trend.

~~~
acqq
Thank you for introducing me to:

[http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html](http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html)

------
sokoloff
My POV is that if you want to improve door-to-door speed, focus on the airport
experience (more time-efficient security, check-in, more predictability to let
people "cut it closer", faster baggage handling and outbound logistics [rental
car, etc]).

I flew my family on a our current vacation on a multi-leg trip in a 175 mph
airplane, and beat the 560 mph airlines door to door on every leg, because my
ground logistics time is almost non-existent. (Rental car or family pickup
waiting plane-side, no security checks, no waiting for bags, and no sense
"getting there early" because it's obviously not taking off without me.)

Suburb of Boston to suburb of Pittsburgh: 3h30m. From there to suburb of
Cincy: 1h45m. There to Lexington, KY: 52m. There to Livingston, TN: 1h. Only
on the BOS to PIT leg do the airlines have any hope of competing.

Speeding up the airline experience doesn't have much to do with speeding up
the airliners themselves, IMO.

~~~
jmharvey
Being able to "cut it closer" is not just a function of predictability, but
also of frequency and of the consequences for missing your intended departure.
If I miss the local city bus, it's not a big deal, because I can get another
one ten or fifteen minutes later for the same price, so I usually only get to
the stop about 90 seconds before I need to be there. During rush hour, I get
to the caltrain about 3-5 minutes early, and in the evenings, when the trains
only run once an hour, I aim for 5-10 minutes. But if I miss a plane, the next
flight might not be for 6 hours, and it could cost me an extra several hundred
dollars. So even if the airport experience is made more time-efficient, the
nature of the airline timetable will still result in people waiting in
airports.

~~~
mikeash
And this is, of course, another symptom of people valuing money more than time
when it comes to air travel. Why are flights usually infrequent? Because
airlines fly large airplanes less frequently rather than small airplanes more
frequently, because it's cheaper. Why does it cost a lot of money to change
your flight? Because airlines run their aircraft at close to 100% capacity,
because it's cheaper.

Cut the average airliner size in half, increase the flight frequency by four,
and average 50% full, and you'll have no problem missing a flight and getting
on a later one. You'll also pay 3-4x as much for the ticket, of course.

~~~
sstrudeau
Can major hub airports handle 4x the traffic of smaller planes vs large planes
(I honestly don't know)? In the NYC area, in particular, air traffic
congestion is a huge problem so "adding more flights" is not a practical
option (unless those flights can be stacked more densely).

There have been many solutions proposed to this problem (usually expanding
smaller, "nearby" airports) but it seems to me a better option would be to
expand and improve regional passenger rail to reduce demand for short and
medium-leg flights thus freeing capacity for longer distance flights.

------
brendn
The Concorde was an engineering marvel, but it was more than just increasingly
cheap transatlantic fares that did it in. Noise regulations prevented it from
flying over the Continental US. Maintenance became increasingly expensive as
the fleet aged. (The technical problems with its air intakes and tires caused
safety issues, too.)

It's easy to say it's an entirely economic issue, but it isn't. The 2000 crash
of Air France Flight 4590 shattered passenger confidence, the post-bubble
recession meant fewer people had the disposable income to buy tickets, and the
post-9/11 slump in air travel further reduced ticket sales.

The article really only convincingly explains why we don't have a replacement
Concorde, not why the Concorde went out of service. Jet fuel is expensive.
Today, airlines and aircraft manufacturers spend trillions of dollars to
improve fuel efficiency to keep up with rising fuel prices.

It's not that we're too cheap, it's that the the industry was more interested
in advances in conventional jet efficiency so that airlines could reap the
benefit across a much, much larger fleet.

There's always a desire to wrap up complex and multifaceted decisions in a
neat little package. I don't think it's possible to point to a single issue
(economic or otherwise) that made supersonic transport unviable.

------
smackfu
Skips over the whole sonic boom issue, which basically prevents supersonic
flight over the USA, and probably Europe. Anything that limits a plane's
routes is not good.

~~~
pkfrank
The article actually talks quite a bit about the additional challenges
introduced when approaching Mach 1. Agreed, though, that additional
_regulations_ regarding those speeds weren't discussed.

~~~
tg3
It only really discussed the challenges from the plane's perspective, not the
people on the ground when the plane broke the barrier.

The regulations are in place because sonic booms can be not only a nuisance to
those on the ground, but destructive.

------
sologoub
The comparison to the computer age made me think about this in a different
light - travel is now less valuable because of the on-set of great
telecommunications tools than it was even 50 years ago.

Today, huge deals can be negotiated largely over the phone/skype/webex/etc,
making in person meetings less frequent. Therefore, if I can accomplish more
by not traveling and communicating via Internet or phone, when I do travel,
actual time spent flying is not as important, because I already made every
effort to minimize travel in the first place, leaving only meetings that are
truly worth it.

~~~
mentos
my thoughts exactly

we're already traveling at the speed of light

------
icebraining
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768938)

------
coin
Nice article content, but why is pinchzoom disabled for mobile devices? What
value could that possibly add?

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
Why is that even a feature of browsers? On my desktop I can zoom whenever,
wherever I want. Why should it be any different on mobile...

Edit: In mobile safari I have a bunch of bookmarklets (javascript bookmarks)
for enabling zoom, and to zoom the way desktop browsers do (increase text size
and reflow text).

~~~
ianlevesque
It's for websites that want to mimic apps.

~~~
lukeschlather
Mimic apps that break on screen resolutions other than the tested ones?

------
dirktheman
If I recall correctly (I worked in the travel industry once), the price for a
one-way from Paris to NYC was about 12K. An astonishing price, and you'd have
to be a really well-paid executive to justify the price difference between a
regular flight!

~~~
dllthomas
_" [Y]ou'd have to be a really well-paid executive to justify the price
difference between a regular flight!"_

Nonesense! You could be a really well paid actor or a really well paid
musician or maybe a politician on a junket or even an escort...

------
tshile
If they were to ask what improvements I (as a customer) want now, I'd tell
them: \- speed up the security checks, being advised to show up 2 hours before
boarding is ridiculous \- work on making the system more flexible so I don't
have 2-3 hour delays.

Improving or reducing time for those two things would greatly improve my
flying experience. Much more than cutting off 20% of my flight time. They
shouldn't increase cost any more per ticket either.

------
kenkam
Here the article forgets to mention airlines as an intermediary. Boeing and
Airbus do not manufacture planes for us, they do it for the airlines. Airlines
know that to make the most profit they need bigger and more fuel efficient
planes over faster ones. And that's why we have them today.

Also, slightly unrelated:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_ever...](http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html).
One of his points is interesting: if they had spent the billions of pounds on
making the [eurostar] journey more enjoyable (by giving out free petrus served
by models) than cutting travel time by a moderate amount, we'd all be asking
for longer journey times! ... which _is_ what the article is saying: we don't
want faster travel, we want more affordable and arguably more comfortable
travelling.

~~~
nickff
This is true, but misses the point that if another airline could enter the
market with a desirable product, or an existing airline could add a fast
service. The airline market is a highly competitive one, as all the vendors
are distributing largely undifferentiated products The airlines and
manufacturers regularly collaborate in the design of new aircraft.

~~~
kenkam
You are correct, and a pattern has emerged: there are the airlines that
differentiates themselves on service that is tied to their country of origin
(Singapore Airlines vs Emirates, both fly A380, but definitely different feel
to them), and then there are no-frills airlines.

The collaboration you speak of are mostly to do with cabin sizes, how many
seats, which variants to make to satisfy the majority of customers -- these
can all be changed when the main parts of the plane stay the same: e.g.
fuselage, engine, etc. Rarely do an airline get Airbus/Boeing to change main
parts of the planes: one exception is EasyJet when they bought an insane
number (200?) of A320s from Airbus: Airbus made a fuselage specially designed
for EasyJet that had more seats and they had to move their doors.

~~~
nickff
If you look at almost any modern airliner's development cycle, you will see
that a significant period of time was spent simply developing the
specifications in collaboration with the airlines. I am not familiar with any
commercial jet that has been developed without commitments from airlines to
buy it.

Even the DC-3 was developed in response to a request from TWA for something
similar to the Boeing 247.

------
steamer25
I was just flying for the first time in a decade last week and I saw an
oversize tail on another plane while we were taxi-ing around the runway. The
proportions struck me as non-obvious. That got me wondering if/how much we've
begun to see data-mining/machine-learning algos and computational aero/fluid
dynamics influence aircraft design.

E.g., genetic algorithms that vary the tail/wing/nose/etc. size/position and
runs virtual designs through a simulator to see if various combinations
perform better than others.

My next thought was, "how would you design the fitness function?". I.e., what
are the right objective measures you can use to determine that one design is
'better' than another? I.e., How do you determine the optimal balance of speed
vs. fuel efficiency vs. comfort/stability/safety vs. production/materials cost
etc.?

------
justinph
Air travel is one of the least efficient and most polluting forms of travel.
Going slower and burning less fuel is great, even if it isn't as fast as
technically possible.

~~~
ecopoesis
False.

A 65% full 737 produces 184 grams of CO2 per passenger mile. An 80% full 747
produces 162 gCO2/ per passenger mile. [1]

A car produces between 390 and 600 grams of CO2 per mile. [2]

So if your car is efficient, and you're carrying more then two people, you can
barely beat the efficiency of 40+ year old aircraft.

[1]
[http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.htm](http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.htm)
[2]
[http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_car.htm](http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_car.htm)

~~~
reportingsjr
I just want to point out that those car CO2 figures don't go to very high fuel
efficiency rates. I have a prius c (high on the efficiency scale, I know) and
I just calculated about 290 grams of CO2 per mile (about 50mpg). Still not
amazing, but a good bit better than 390g CO2/mile. That's just for one
passenger as well.

~~~
ecopoesis
Good point. Of course, modern 787s and A380s are also far more fuel efficient
then then '60s and 70s era aircraft. According to Wikipedia, the 787 is 20%
more efficient then a 767

------
fnordfnordfnord
Let's see, flying on the Concorde cuts the transatlantic flight time in half,
but you still have to deal with getting yourself and your luggage on and off
the plane. So, the time savings isn't that great. The plane isn't as
comfortable as first class on a bigger, slower jet. Supersonic or not, it
takes a day to fly transatlantic. People that can afford Concorde flights can
afford chartered flights, or have their own jet.

------
thehme
Well, when you consider that round trip tickets from the NY area to Chicago
were going for $280 and now they are $360, the difference can make anyone
think twice, especially if you are doing this 3 or more times a year and for 2
ppl. The cost per person + car rental + gas + hotel costs add up to much more
than the math for driving (even with hotel, car, and gas costs), such that
driving, although slower, becomes a money saving option. I would think that
most people travel within the country they live in, and mostly for vacation,
so paying more money to get to the destination faster, is not a good option vs
saving the $ and getting there a little later. Then business people don't care
to be at a location earlier for longer, they just want to go do what they have
to do and call it a day of work, even if they only actually worked 1 hr and
traveled the rest.

Unless emergencies or extreme situations, I do not see much incentive for
people to want to pay more to be at a close location faster. This is somewhat
of a bummer for ppl who would like to travel at high speeds, but think about
it, it is definitely expensive.

------
rdl
The one route where supersonic probably makes sense is trans-pacific. Still no
sonic boom, and would turn travel from "a complete day wasted both directions"
to something better. Especially for something like NYC-HKG, if you could solve
the sonic boom issue (although most of it is over Canada or oceans; not sure
about the inland China part)

------
zurn
We're not nearly cheap enough: The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost
of flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions.
Further working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the
2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.

------
dllthomas
Also, there's a huge difference between trading off high-value time for
middling-value-time, versus actually spending the time. If I'm using my time
on the plane to read or catch up on sleep or prepare for my presentation, it
is less important to me that my flight be over quickly.

~~~
13b9f227ecf0
I would pay more and tolerate _slower_ flying times if the trade off was a
less hellish flying experience. The TSA sucks. Flight attendants suck and the
seats suck. Airport public transportation is usually lousy.

In fact I often tolerate substantially longer travel times to ride on Amtrak
rather than deal with the nightmare that is modern air travel.

~~~
dllthomas
Agreed, for most of my trips, especially if I could reliably get work done.

------
fomojola
Odd: this one was making the rounds a couple of weeks ago as
[https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/7885a299bca2](https://medium.com/lift-and-
drag/7885a299bca2).

~~~
kristianp
It looks like medium.com uses a label/tag system, so an article can be
discovered by looking at the "lift and drag" label or the "roaming the earth"
label, for example:

[https://medium.com/roaming-the-
earth/7885a299bca2](https://medium.com/roaming-the-earth/7885a299bca2)

------
mephi5t0
Problem with Concorde was not price but reliability. They were dangerous to
pilot and felt a few times, imagine that uncontrolled thing falling on some
poor village? money is not the issue, usually, otherwise military would still
fly a "Black bird", right? Technological challenges, like temperature of jets
and ability to stay in control if something goes wrong is more important. If
your Boing looses an engine, you will still land it. Try that with Concord.

------
FatalBaboon
Moving around the world is something that has always been ridiculously
expensive, and the price comparators hardly help, they just add noise.

So yeah, it is about price, and if that problem is ever solved THEN people
will discuss speed and other bonuses.

It's like piss poor managers pushing agile when their developers don't even
have a computer. Priorities matter.

------
Sarien
The fuel used to fly does not only cost money to buy but also costs
environment to burn. I am quite happy if people are cheap when it comes to the
environment. It is more likely that they are watching their wallets instead
but in this rare case that seems to be win-win.

------
lewispb
I wonder if something like this could be used for round-the-world passenger
transportation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_\(spacecraft\))

------
outericky
I recently enrolled in ClearMe. So... for about $15 per month, I get to skip
the security line at SFO. For a couple of bucks, I reduced my SFO portion of
the trip time by about 20 mins. Much more economical.

------
fragmede
Virgin America's entire fleet has Wifi (though it's not eh fastest) and AC
outlets. (Other carriers only have wifi on select flights.)

What's my rush again?

------
lbebber
While faster flights would be nice, he is right in that price is more of a
priority than speed. Besides, an even bigger concern would be safety.

------
verroq
It is in the interests of airlines to have longer flights to maximise in
flight spending. Customers never had a say in this. Most people probably spend
more time in customs than on the plane anyway. A 20% decrease of air time
isn't that big of a deal to most.

~~~
pkfrank
I'm not sure I buy this. I think it's in the airlines' interests to minimize
costs (fuel) by flying as efficiently as possible (maybe slower - maximizing
air-time). I would be surprised if in-flight spending increased meaningfully
over a flight that is ~15% longer.

~~~
kyllo
Yeah, I strongly doubt that in-flight spending on concessions and duty-free
catalogs pays for the jet fuel expended over any appreciable time period
during the flight.

------
frenchman_in_ny
Very cool - you can see Mach diamonds in the picture of the X1.

------
knodi
No, the airline charge too much for the service. If the service was
economically worth it for it value it provided there would be a market for it.

------
electic
One word: Hyperloop.

------
talmand
Sorry buddy, Superman can go much faster than mach five.

------
13b9f227ecf0
I'm also too cheap for bullet trains. Lots of people cheer-lead for high speed
rail in America, but all I want is normal trains that run quite frequently.

~~~
MattLaroche
Depending on what your routes and usage, higher speed is better than more
frequent service.

For example, let's say your options are a 2 hour train that runs hourly, and
an hour long ride that departs every other hour.

* Fast train: best case, 1 hour. Worst case, 2:59. Average case - about 2 hours. * Slow train: best case, 2 hours. Worst case: 2:59. Average case - about 2.5 hours.

Of course this is one example - but there are definitely cases where increased
speed is strictly better than increased frequency. (Unless being on the train
is better than whatever you could be doing waiting for the train)

~~~
cameldrv
The reality though is that high speed trains aren't nearly as fast as you'd
think from the claims of 250-300 km/h top speeds. Particularly in Germany,
130kph average speed on a route is very good. Replacing a 100kph train with a
130kph train doesn't make an enormous difference. In order to get double the
usual speed, you need to have totally dedicated tracks, end-to-end, and they
haven't done that in most places. Having trains run more often makes a huge
difference in convenience and also allows you to not worry too much about
missing your train.

~~~
Gmo
They have done that on a lot of routes in France.

------
ctdonath
_For almost 30 years there was a really fast way to fly, but we didn’t buy
enough Concorde tickets to keep it going (I didn’t buy a single one)._

Over 30 years, we've gone from IBM PC to rMBP: about a hundred times the
pixels, a thousand times faster processor speed, a million times more memory,
a billion times more storage - all for 1/3rd the price. The physics involved
could accommodate such an improvement. If we had likewise focused on travel
speed instead of cost, methinks we would not have achieved NYC-to-London
travel in 25 seconds.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Yeah, so... NY to London is 25 seconds is about 500,000 mph (~Mach 650)
_average_.

Perspective: Mach 32 gets you to escape velocity, and the nuclear manhole-
cover (which may have been the fastest manmade object ever) is estimated as
somewhere north of Mach 200 or so. That's right: not even an atomic bomb can
get you the kind of speed you're asking for. :P

Hmm. Assume an even acceleration profile, with your first 12.5s accelerating
and the second 12.5s decelerating, 1 million MPH peak. That's ~1800 times the
force of gravity. Forget physics; the _biology_ involved can't accomodate such
an improvement. :P In fact, you could probably put a floor on the travel time
from anywhere to anywhere by assuming passengers aren't really interested in
experiencing much more than 1G accelerations.

~~~
ctdonath
That's my point: physics+biology just aren't conducive to anything close to a
comparable increase in travel speed short of teleportation (read "Flash
Crowds" as an interesting tangent). As others note, the best tolerable
improvement in travel time is lost amid the fixed overhead of
embarking/disembarking times getting people to and on the vehicle.

 _passengers aren 't really interested in experiencing much more than 1G
accelerations_

Assuming continuous 1G acceleration (halfway there, reverse thrust
thereafter), NYC-to-London would peak at 1200km/h with travel time of 34
minutes. Ignoring overhead, that's about 1/15th the time for subsonic travel
now; an impressive improvement for sure, yet still paltry when comparing
computing improvements.

Flipping the original argument and blathering on, consider if computing
improvements over 30 years led to just a 72MHz processor as commercial top-of-
the line: indeed in general we'd favor cost over speed. Likewise, the cost of
a one-way London-NYC flight has plummeted from a quarter of one's annual
salary to just a couple days' pay, a drop around two orders of magnitude;
availability is also an issue, with comparable flights happening thousands of
times daily at relatively amazing convenience, vs limited to a couple hundred
per year.

