Alright everyone its parachutes today, ive got a bet going.
LGL to ATL usually is a 2 hour flight. Wonder if they had more time booked due to air traffic.
Weren’t airlines purposefully inflating trip times because of the Biden administration’s rule changes on trip refunds?
Party pooper here.
You know when fast food workers post images of things like stepping bare footed onto a bowl of salad?
To me, this is the equivalent for pilots. Safety, checklists and routines, take time. Don’t go posting on social media that your are competing in this space.
Ps: the post in question is arguably not too bad. But, if this is “a thing”, then I’d suggest to be careful to be associated with it.
Safety, checklists and routines, take time.
Walkarounds and such are done before takeoff, and you aren’t taking off early, especially not in an airliner. In-flight checklists don’t take more or less time, since the airliner is going whether you want it or not, and the pilot does not / can not just set the throttle for a faster speed. It’s fine.
There are two major factors influencing travel time on an airliner, neither of them have anything to do with doing stuff faster with less attention to safety. They are airport organisation and prevailing winds.
If your departure/destination is competent and there are less complications from overworked ATC or other planes being late on arrival/departure, you’re most likely fine.
The big thing though is wind. A head/tailwind can affect your ground speed to a degree of +/- 30% in extreme cases, so these are harmless. It’s not even up to the pilot “going faster”. There are similar posts and even articles about airliners “breaking the sound barrier”, eg. having a larger ground speed than the speed of sound in static air on the ground.
I mean, the pilot can literally set the throttle for more speed? Isn’t that the whole function of it? “Engine go more/less brrr?”
(I am aware of autothrottle and all that, but iirc pilots still have a lot of leeway regarding economy/speed/…)
I’m sure the airlines want those throttles set to the most fuel efficient setting that gets the plane there safely and on time. Fuel is expensive.
As the other response noted, arriving early can lead to headaches, but for other reasons - for example, slots at the gates are timed, so arriving before the previous plane departs won’t work well. Of course this doesn’t always apply, sometimes the gate is just sitting empty already.
Also, airlines have padded their schedules for years to give themselves some leeway in case of unexpected delays in taking off, landing, minor issues with the plane, etc. I assume this is a relatively small amount, like 5 or 10 minutes, but I really don’t know. But it does mean the flight will show up early frequently when things are normal.
I’m no aerospace doctor or nothin, but I’d think the pilot would be expected to stay on a very strict schedule. If they arrived at the intended airport minutes ahead of schedule they might have trouble landing when another scheduled flight is trying to land or have to awkwardly circle the runway until there is clearance.
Checks out. I always try to fly Delta when possible. Had the least amount of delays from them.
Stretch goal: Arrive before takeoff.
Concorde has entered the chat.
Phileas Fogg has entered the chat.
In before someone posts the Aspen 20 Speedcheck copypasta
They do. And it can end like this.
Boeing is doing the low% speedrun where you try to get to your destination with the least aircraft parts.
At this point arriving at the airport is optional.
A TOS shows that if you do an out of bounds glitch you can trigger the loading zone under ground because they stretch to the bottom of the sky box.
Is doing anything fast or being happy about anything going smoothly really considered a speedrun now?
Don’t get me wrong. If Summoning salt posts a two hour long video about the history and optimization of Delta Airlines flight 545 between LGA and ATL, I’m watching that shit.
<Pilots start looking for glitches>
Hmm, after reading my contract carefully, there’s nothing in there that explicitly says I actually have to wait for the passengers and baggage to be loaded before taking off…
[halfway through the flight] “Dang, I can’t make this time. Going to reset”
Just type in the 7500 cheatcode and you can take shortcuts through military airspace.
Freebird intensifys
I mean I’m not surprised. You’d be amazed at the stupid shit people think is cool.
Block time (airlines calculate it differently) was traditionally viewed from “block to block”, the time the wheel chocks were removed for the aircraft to move under its own power for departure to the time the wheel chocks were put back under the wheels at destination. Now it just means what the airline thinks the flight time will be for scheduling purposes.
As a passenger, this is what you see when your app tells you the flight time. It includes taxi out and taxi in.
Delay-prone flights are often over blocked, so a perfectly delay-free flight (push, taxi, takeoff, fly, land, taxi in, park) that takes say an hour and a half total might me blocked for 1:50 because historically one of the airports might be busy at that time an they know there will be a long taxi, gate holds, whatever.
So sometimes fate smiles on everyone and you get to leave early, miss whatever built in delays there might be planned, ATC gives you a couple shortcuts, a favorable wind, and bam, you’re in 30 minutes early.
So not really a speed run, just lots of luck.
Nice explanation, thanks.
I was thinking that maybe the company needed that plane somewhere quickly and just said screw it to fuel efficiency.
The RNG gods giveth and the RNG gods take away.
oh like a flipped bit isn’t also lots of luck
