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from the Airbus-Wants-Your-Flight-to-Suck-Even-More dept.
Airbus has been working on making the economics of the A380 even better for airlines who buy it: pack 11 seats into a row:
Airbus has found a way to make flying economy even worse. That’s quite a feat, given how crummy the experience is these days. The trick, it turns out, is eliminating one the few remaining saving graces of air travel: better than even odds you won’t be squeezed into a middle seat. Generally, you’ve got a two in three chance of landing an aisle or a window.
But now, airlines flying the Airbus A380, the largest commercial jet on the planet, can reduce those odds. The European plane maker announced this week that it will offer a 3-5-3 cabin configuration, creating rows with 11 seats.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the future of civilized air travel lies with airships.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:07PM
More reason for telecommuting as an alternate to work travel.
You're absolutely right about travel just to attend meetings being a waste, and better done by Skype. This is already happening to a large degree, and the whole airship vs. airplane argument is really irrelevant to it: Skype is going to be much cheaper (free in fact) and faster than either form of travel.
However, there's still a good amount of business travel, either for things which can't really be done by Skype, such as engineers working on-site to resolve problems or do testing, or executives who just feel like traveling and seeing other employees and managers in-person at other work sites.
this also makes train travel look like a better option
Trains are probably a decent option in Europe with the Eurorail, but here in the US they totally suck unless you're traveling along the Northeast Corridor or along the west coast, and even there it depends on how far you have to go. Amtrak is actually not very cheap, and while it is wonderful to ride on it (I've used the NE corridor route a few times), it's not fast at all, so if you're traveling any kind of distance it really doesn't compete. People don't have 3 days to ride across the country, and doing that in a train seat without taking a shower isn't very comfortable (they do have sleeper cars, but now you're looking at a far higher ticket price).
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:59PM
You are confused and probably thinking of Eurail [wikipedia.org], but that is only a travel agency-sort of company that sells passes for a variety of countries' domestic rail operators. Within the European Union (and naturally outside of it as well) each country still has its own rail carriers, which can vary drastically in price, punctuality, quality of rolling stock and passenger comforts, etc.