Just the ticket The best flight is straight and does not stop
Airlines are offering grateful passengers more long-haul flights
● When the tired passengers climbed off the inaugural Qantas direct flight from Australia to London last week, 17 hours in the air had earned them one distinction. Their Boeing 787 had flown further than a Gulfstream G650, the fanciest private jet, can reach.
Among the privileges of owning a private jet is the freedom to bypass airport hubs and fly directly to your destination. For this brief period in history, before the aviation elite obtain bigger engines for their Cessnas and Gulfstreams, the economy class has the ultra-long-distance edge.
So it was puzzling to see the Qantas passengers being treated as if they were climbing Everest or travelling to the moon, needing to be served special hot chocolate on board to boost their melatonin levels and lull them to sleep. Yes, it is uncomfortable to be stuck in an economy seat for that long, but have you hung around an airport recently? It is preferable to get the journey over with as quickly as possible.
History teaches us that it is airlines that prefer to route passengers through airport hubs, not the passengers themselves. If the choices are similarly priced, people would travel point-to-point every time.
This was the original allure of flight, and futurists who attempt to disrupt the industry tend to favour air taxis. “It travels in a straight line and it will never have to stop at a traffic light,” marvels one executive about the autonomous electric aircraft being tested in New Zealand by Kitty Hawk, a start-up backed by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Nor will it have to detour through Schiphol or Dubai.
There are few examples of industry rivals making such contrasting bets on the future as Airbus’s investment in the double-decker A380 while Boeing developed the 787. The first was a wager on airlines continuing to channel passengers through their favoured hubs in large aircraft; the other on direct flights between cities.
The outcome was clear: Airbus faced weak demand for its A380 and has cut production.
The industry’s difficulty is that flying commercially is not much fun, wherever you are sitting. First class is a lot better than being in the back, but no matter how much lobster, champagne and hot chocolate you are served, it is inferior to being in an armchair at home.
You may be reclining in a flat bed or have your knees crammed against a seat back, but the essence of commercial flights is ineluctable.
Everyone is packed into a long, cramped tube, drying out, and there is no escape.
The 787’s appeal is that it improves conditions for everybody, not just those in front. It has higher cabin air pressure, better lighting and larger windows. Having regrouped from its A380 mistake, Airbus has followed Boeing’s lead with the new A350, which is smaller than the A380 and has a composite fuselage that permits moister air.
The wonder is that airlines fought the obvious for so long. Instead of point-to-point flying, the first two decades of US air transport following the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act were dominated by the hub and spoke; passengers routinely had to take short flights on regional jets, connecting to destinations on larger aircraft.
The hub-and-spoke era was a fine example of companies adopting the approach that suited them rather than customers. The theory was that by routing more passengers via hubs, they could reduce costs and lower fares, thus exploiting a network effect to ward off competition. In practice, low-cost airlines such as Southwest beat them on simplicity and price.
Low-cost carriers have steadily raised
It is uncomfortable . . . but have you hung around an airport recently?
their share of the market by flying point-topoint between cities — they now provide 30% of capacity in North America and Europe. The approach is being extended to long-distance international flights on fuelefficient twin-engine aircraft such as the A350 and Boeing 777-200.
Given the choice, people save time. A study by economists at the University of Barcelona found that the introduction of nonstop connections such as Berlin to Miami and Milan to Delhi can more than double traffic. The fact that many non-hub cities are not linked by direct flights “suggests that the interests of airlines may not be coincident with those of cities”, they tactfully note.
Ultra-long-haul to the far side of the earth could be a flight too far: passengers may opt to land at hubs and stretch their legs after 10 hours before boarding another plane to their destination. But if Boeing and Airbus keep improving the comfort of cabins, the direction of travel is unmistakable.
It took seven stops to fly from Sydney to London in 1947, and it may soon require no stops at all. Whatever the in-flight service, that is progress.