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The airlines currently have to guess the flights they need to schedule between different areas, and we book seats on these flights ahead of time. The system is outdated and could be more effective.
Instead, we should just book a trip from point A to point B. When we all arrive at the airport, planes
ready to take off can be allocated to destinations based on the actual number of people traveling to them. This can eliminate the number of empty seats, allow for intelligent optimization of plane allocation, and reduce the overall costs of running the airline infrastructure.
[link]
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This could work if airports had large adjacent hangars storing planes of various sizes, and large adjacent bars storing pilots of various certifications. |
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But in reality, planes and crew that take off from an airport have previously arrived there, carrying passengers, and spend very little time on the ground.
(I'm guessing that an unused plane is more expensive than a slightly underused one.) |
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That means that the room for spontaneous equipment switches is very limited. |
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Also, it would be difficult for those on the other end intending to meet the travellers. Last time I flew (San Francisco US to Manchester UK) the websites I looked at showed a variance of about a day in flight lengths due to number of connections and length of time between. Had I asked my brother to stand in the airport looking for me for 24 hours he would probably have been less keen on being the one to pick me up. |
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It might work as a specific class of
ticket - if you weren't on a deadline,
and just casually travelling as long as
you eventually get there, you might be
able to be handed off from airline to
airline as if you were some class of
interchangeable freight, according to
just-in-time demand and supply of
seats. |
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For most people and most flights,
things would run as normal, but this
'standby-plus' ticket scheme would by
agreement across all participating
airlines, enable a notional and default
end-to-end route to be rearranged on
the fly (as it were) to suit what
transpires on the ground. eg, a family
doesn't turn up for their flight, so a
request is made to the pool, and that
amount of scheme-participating
travellers currently in the air are found
to be available as
soon as they land, if they can be
shunted from one plane to another -
rather than the four hour wait they were
expecting prior to boarding a different
plane on a
slightly different route. |
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They still get there, perhaps slightly
early (perhaps too early - but their
ticket would have been cheaper to
compensate for this sort of eventuality).
The scheme would always be seeking to
match connections that are already in
the air, with what may happen on the
ground shortly later - ie, it would be
greedy for existing travellers already in
flight expecting a connection, but
perhaps one not quite so soon. |
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This frees up a more 'confirmed' (but
still short-cycle) amount of seats, which
perhaps can then be filled with a second
category - the latecomers to intended
flights (that have now closed to
boarding or have actually taken off),
who might be shoehorned into
what are now known soon-to-be
available seats, if they agree to pay a
slight penalty (for being
late). |
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The flight crew and actual planes
continue to rotate as per usual, just the
allocation works across airlines
dynamically to a higher degree of
efficiency. The 'fluid ticketing' pool
participation by airlines might prove
beneficial to them in the long run. |
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Quite possibly but I'd bet arguments over how to split the fares would doom the plan pretty early. Still, + if it's not mandatory. |
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Maybe, but consider that London
Transport within the Greater London
area, for almost as long as I've been
alive, have allowed people with one sort
of bus pass or another to travel across
Greater London, on buses, ostensibly
thought of as simply 'London buses'. In
reality, each route belongs to a specific
and discrete bus company located
somewhere or other in or near London.
The
agreement across bus companies allows
this to happen to the benefit of all
involved (somehow). Perhaps some of
that applies to some of this? |
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[Ian] //you might be able to be handed off from airline to airline as if you were some class of interchangeable freight// - thus, this would work better on short-hop flights between European cities which are already closer to regular bus services than long-haul flights. In fact I once arrived at Antwerp airport a few hours early for my flight to London. Antwerp airport is tiny with just two or three check-in desks, so when I asked if there was any way to get an earlier flight the person at the check-in desk where I was just called over to the next desk (which was a diferent airline) and asked if I could go on their (earlier) flight. They let me on and I got home early. I don't think this was any sort of formal arrangement - some kind of "quid pro quo", I think. |
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With this system the flight crew are unlikely to ever see home again. The system as described depends on having as many people at point B wanting to fly to point A as vice versa. In order to get around this flights would have to operate much as Mr Tindale's buses do, i.e. lots of short local routes and a lot of plane-hopping involved if you want to go to somewhere out of the way. Ulan Bator for instance.
[notes that hippo's irritatingly similar anno has appeared first] |
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