Flight delays get a lot of attention, and certainly mechanical and staffing issues are the fault of the airline. There’s also air traffic control which creates congestion – it isn’t just responsible for delays but also for longer flight times that get built into schedules. We don’t talk enough about that.

Maybe the biggest failure in air travel is something we don’t talk about at all. How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?

It happens to the best of us ✈️ unless you build in enough time

For arrival times: Flying domestically? We recommend arriving at least 2.5 hours early. Flying internationally? 3 hours early.

Tomorrow will be one of our busiest days, so please plan accordingly. pic.twitter.com/5PWWKsI9ZH

— Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (@AUStinAirport) October 3, 2024

The lengthened times for showing up at the airport mean that it no longer even makes sense for many people to take shorter flights, but aircraft technology (electric, short and vertical takeoff) is changing and becoming far more viable in the coming years so we should be thinking about that. The FAA is considering standards for vertiports but are we thinking creatively enough or will that conversation be too status quo-focused either because of regulator bias or because it’s entrenched interests most involved?

These are really important conversations and not just about convenience, although convenience matters more than we often give it credit for.

• In 2023, U.S. airlines carried around 819.3 million passengers on domestic flights across the United States.

• Airline passengers skew higher income, so let’s conservatively assume a $100,000 average income or $48.08 hourly wage.

Taking an extra two hours per passenger on average, that’s 1.64 billion hours, or $78.9 billion cost to the economy just for extra time wasted for domestic passengers.

And that’s only the extra cost of time wasted on departure. It doesn’t count delays on arrival,

• airlines forcing passengers to gate check bags, which sends them to baggage claim
  
• poor processes for baggage claim, that can delay bags for 45 minutes or longer
  
• buses to rideshare and rental car lots

Why do we simply accept showing up 3 hours before a flight, and taking an hour to get out of the airport, turning a two hour trip into 6 hours without even considering the time it takes to get to and from the airport?

We’ve turned airports into shopping malls, because airline passengers aren’t an airport customer they’re the product to be sold to. Longer dwell times to fill with shopping, therefore, have become a feature not a bug. Airlines frequently share in that revenue, either directly or through lower airport costs. Passengers alone can’t push for this – things won’t change until the airlines see it as in their interest.

More and smaller airports are needed. Streamlined security, that doesn’t wait for nationwide universal rollout, is needed. We need runways and taxiways and air traffic capacity to increase throughput without stacking delays. Most of all, we need to avoid complacency that accepts the status quo as given.