Comment by heavensteeth
2 days ago
> Taking an extra two hours per passenger on average, that’s 1.725 billion hours, or $83 billion cost to the economy just for extra time wasted for domestic passengers.
That seems really wrong to me?
1. Business flyers are getting paid for the day, wherever they are. Whether they spend an extra hour in the office or at an airport is orthogonal to them getting paid. They may be producing less output which in turn decreases GDP, but that's its own can of worms and also not what this is trying to calculate anyway.
2. Leisure flyers, naturally, fly when either their business is closed or they've taken time off. So again, whether they leave at 2AM or 4AM, they're not getting paid for that day.
I don't think the layman would end up with any more money in their pocket were they to leave 2 hours later for their flights.
This is a very pessimistic view. Everyone adjusts their lives including business and leisure flyers to account for the unpredictable time needed at the airport. This not only affects the travelers but also people around them or connected to them. This has cascading effect on time used for other tasks which indirectly affects the productivity of a person overall.