For them it's great. More time at the airport means more shopping, eating, drinking (you are not allowed to bring in liquids) and spending. Why would they want to change that?

In many airports, they don't show the boarding gate until 1 hour before the flight (even if they know it sooner). The reason is for people to do more shopping rather than hanging out at the boarding gate.

Looks like someone missed the news about not having to take our shoes off anymore for TSA. Freedom restored!

I normally don’t mind it. I few it as the cost of using the service especially if you are flying somewhere that will take over 6+ hours to dive to.

But overall the flying experience has gotten worse. A race to bottom has crushed the overall experience

Well at least we have phones now to keep us entertained lol

That recommendation seems excessive, I live 3+ hours from the airport which means I have to leave a lot of time for incidentals en route, and never get there THAT early... 2H tops for domestic, if I lived 15 minutes from the airport I'd probably get there 1:15 early.

Security is rarely more than 20-30 mins without pre-check, 10 with.

With border and homeland security finally in patriot control, I expect airport security spending will relocate a bit, that will move the next bottleneck to Air Traffic Control...

... coincidentally I started re-watching Ground Control yesterday with my kids after letting my oldest play a few minutes of Airport Madness and him getting hooked.

The first few minutes of that movie play out exactly what they disclosed in Newark earlier this year, systems going down while IT duct-taped cables back together. The entire premise of the movie is based on their being critically short-staffed.

That movie is from 1993.

That Newark conversation coordinated with the regime change does lead me to think the pendulum is swinging back, and we're on the precipice of another 50's-like building period we're still living off of today.

I don't think the economics of airports becoming malls get in the way of this, rich people aren't going to big airports any more... thats a lot of lost revenue because people are paying to fly out of small airports on private charter. Also there is demand destruction to be reversed, there's still plenty of incentive to make air travel more efficient.

They are saying 83 billions lost. I am saying more than double won through the in-airport spend by all those people waiting 2-3 hours. Plus you have to consider that there are airports where 2h-3h are barely enough to check-in, pass through security and get to the gate. So no hope to have this rule taken out. :)

It is for sure the biggest hurdle of air travel. I use to travel regularly to 2 locations for work, one by air, one by train. Air journey: leave home super early or super late (2 flights per day only), 10min walk to train station, 45min by train, 2h wasted at airport for security, customs, boarding, waiting, 45min flight, 15-20min to get out and reach train station. 45-60min by train to hotel in city center or to working place. Alternative was 8-9h by train.

By train to second location: 10min walk to train station, train already here, take seat, leave 10min later top. 3h of train with large seats, table and wifi access, I could work all travel or rest really for a couple of hours. Get off of train, walk 10min to hotel in city center. 10-15min by street car to working place outside center. Oh and there were trains every 2h and I could change train often up to the last minute with few or no fee.

Wonder which travel I would prefer.

I think a lot of people have just given up hope that air travel can be anything but frustrating. It’s wild how “show up 3 hours early and maybe your gate changed twice” has become normal. Security theater, bloated systems, and zero accountability. What’s crazy is how much time life, really is wasted globally because of this. Feels like we optimized everything around control, not efficiency or dignity.

I support the theory that the more time you spend inside the airport, the more you buy!! And if we add to that the simple fact that waiting for three or more hours is mentally fraught, it causes some people great anxiety... Why not calm it with junk food?