GA is the new First Class
I dodged a bullet in my recent trip to New York, arriving home at 10:30 PM Wednesday night, just hours before the new security restrictions went in place. Had I flown home Thursday morning instead of Wednesday night, the traveling experience would have been even more annoying than it usually is, with longer security lines and an absolute ban on all liquids (and many food items) on airplanes.
As near as I can tell, the strategy seems to be to make commercial air travel so miserable that the terrorists give up and take the bus instead.
Today, the Wall Street Journal is running an article about the surge in popularity of private jet and charter flying as an alternative to commercial airlines (subscription required, sorry). It seems to me that general aviation (that is, charter and private aircraft) is becoming the new first class travel, with flexible schedules and no hassle instead of fine wine and attentive flight attendants.
There was a time, perhaps a couple of decades ago, when flying first class actually meant something. A first class ticket could cost a significant fraction of the price of a new car, so only people whose comfort was Worth Something flew up front.
Then the airlines realized that those empty first class seats could be given away (at little additional cost to the airline) to elite frequent fliers as a perk for flying so much. That had the side benefit of freeing seats in coach, which could then be sold for additional revenue, increasing the load factor.
But it also cheapened the first class experience. By the time I started traveling for business regularly (in 1996), pretty much everyone in first class was there because of a free upgrade. I can remember many flights where first class was full, but coach more than half empty--the inverse of what you would expect for a supposedly higher level of service.
Since 2001, the same forces which have been making airline travel progressively more unpleasant (bankrupt airlines cutting back service levels, increasingly obnoxious and intrusive security screening, long and unpredictable lines at airports, etc.) have had the same effect on first class as coach; meanwhile cash-starved airlines are trying to take back some of the revenue generating potential of those first class seats by cutting the price of an upgrade to the point where an average traveler might actually spring for it.
The state of first class today is that at many airlines you can upgrade for under fifty bucks, and the difference between coach and first class is just a larger seat, free booze, and (maybe) a free meal. But you still have to plan to be at the airport 90 minutes before departure (two or three hours today), you are still subjected to long lines and security checks, and the gate agents are just as surly.
Compare that to general aviation travel. If you are flying a charter or private plane, you can depart within minutes of arriving at the airport, there are no security checks, no lines, no fights for the best overhead bins, and best of all, if you're running late the plane will wait for you (instead of departing, leaving you with a cancelled nonrefundable ticket and forced to pay through the nose for a new ticket on the next flight). You may also be able to fly into an airport more convenient to your actual destination.
In fact, the problems with airline travel have gotten so bad that general aviation travel sometimes actually comes out ahead in both time and cost when compared to commercial flight, even ignoring the value of flexible schedules and convenience.
For example, take a trip from Minneapolis to Chicago. This is about a 350-mile flight, and you can get a round-trip ticket for a little under $200 today with three-week advance purchase. Let's compare the commercial flight to the time and cost of flying my personal airplane (back when I owned one):
Commercial Flight
9 AM: Arrive at the airport
10:30 Scheduled departure (90 minutes after arriving at the airport, to allow time to clear security in case the lines are long)
11:30 Arrive in Chicago (60 minutes of flying time)
Noon: Depart airport for final destination (It seems to take about 30 minutes to retrieve luggage; with the current security rules, limiting oneself to carry-on is not a viable option)
Cost: $200/person round trip
Personal Flight (in my former Piper Archer, a 4-seat piston airplane)
9 AM: Arrive at the airport
9:30 AM: Depart for Chicago (allow 30 minutes for preflight inspection because I'm the pilot. If I was just a passenger, I could arrive ten minutes before departure)
11:30 AM: Arrive in Chicago (180 minutes flying time)
11:40 AM: Depart airport for final destination
Cost: 60 gallons of aviation fuel (round trip) at $5/gallon, plus $100 for maintenance and other reserves: $400 for up to three people including myself.
In other words, commercial air travel delays are so bad that flying my own airplane (which cruised at less than one-third the speed of an airliner) would get me to Chicago 20 minutes earlier than flying commercially, with less hassle; and if I was flying with a colleague or two, the price would be the same or less.
Minneapolis to Chicago is something of a special case, since it is a relatively short flight; and flying charter (rather than a personal airplane) will be more expensive.
Even for a longer trip, the comparison isn't so bad. Wednesday I flew from New York to Minneapolis, a distance of about 1,000 miles (give or take). From the time I arrived at the airport in New York to the time I left the airport in Minneapolis was about eight hours. I had a one-hour layover in Chicago (nonstop would have saved that time, but it would have been hundreds of dollars more expensive), and a short (30-minute) delay on the last flight due to a delayed inbound aircraft. In my old Archer, the flight would have taken about ten hours total: nine hours of flying time plus two 30-minute fuel stops (but it would have cost over $1,000 in fuel and maintenance round trip, as opposed to $600 for the two round trip tickets).
That's a remarkably close comparison considering that we're talking about a trip halfway across the continent in an airplane mainly designed to hop up to the cabin and back.
If you go to the other extreme of aircraft, some business jets are as fast or even faster than commercial airliners (though obviously more expensive to operate per passenger). On a coast-to-coast trip, you could easily save three hours of travel time (door to door) each way. That's six hours saved for a round trip, or nearly an entire working day. For people whose time is Worth Something, the appeal of spending a few thousand bucks extra on a round trip ticket to save almost a full working day is obvious. In a business jet, my New York to Minneapolis trip would have been under three hours from parking lot to parking lot--I would have been home in time for dinner, instead of crawling into bed at 11:30 PM.
(If anything, I may be understating the appeal of a business jet. The fastest business jets actually fly about 50 knots faster than typical airliners, and aren't subject to the kinds of network delays that plague commercial travel. Even better, in a business jet you aren't subject to the whims of airline scheduling, which often force business travelers to stay one or two extra nights in a hotel because there's no flight at the right time.)
Can you tell I'm trying to talk myself into plunking down the $25 mil for a Citation X?
(Assuming I had the $25 mil, that is.)