In my experience, your numbers are out for this particular example. It'd reduce it to at most a day. You're right that there's a few hours of faff at either end, though I don't believe it's nearly as long as you're cumulatively adding up. However, those things are dwarfed by the 24 hours of in-air time it currently takes (sure, 17.5 if you want to go to Perth). That time in the plane is death for me, as I cannot sleep sitting upright. It means I get off extra-fatigued and that multiplies my jetlag several-fold.
I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU.
What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.
Every time I sit through a hellish long distance flight I wonder the same thing. The closest anyone’s got is Air New Zealand’s Sky couch - which is a minor improvement on the status quo rather than a reimagining of it.
There’s been so much innovation in business class, but relatively little in economy over the last few decades. Is it because airlines are afraid of cannibalising their business seats? Or regulatory issues regarding non-standard seats?
If anyone can figure out how to give me a lie flat bunk for the same weight and volume per passenger as economy (or even premium economy) they’ve got my business for eternity. Sitting down for 11 hours would feel like torture in comparison.
business seats can recline fully flat and also sit up and they take up a lot of room. given that the name of the game in economy is maximizing seats in square footage, we're not likely to get efficiency here.
the regulation is not really that the seats have to be sat up per se, but that the plane has to be evacuatable in X amount of time, and the only way to do that for your average person is for them to be sitting upright. Which makes sense; it takes a lot of time for someone to get out of a lie flat position.
There are more luxurious options out there but something like United's Polaris seating is comfortable enough. Not saying I'd do trans-Pacific flights like that for the recreation but it's not painful in the way that economy (even with extra legroom) is. Mostly sitting/laying down for the better part of 24 hours is going to be a bit painful/boring however you slice it though.
Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)
I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU.
What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.