Comment by nunez
7 months ago
This is not wasted money. The article fails to take leisure travelers and airport economics into account.
Us seasoned travelers are very comfortable being in airports and airplanes. We have no problem with getting to our gate as boarding is happening because we (a) usually travel alone, (b) have acquired a really good gut feel for the amount of time it takes to get to the gate and (c) have CLEAR and TSA Precheck or similar security programs to move through security rapidly.
Most Americans only travel by plane once or twice yearly. It doesn't look that way in an airport, but that's the magic of large numbers at work. Those travelers don't have any of these advantages. Many of those people travel with families, and everyone with kids knows how big of a job traveling with kids is. Many people also don't know how to transit through security, given how little they travel. They need the three hours.
Modern airports are built around this, like the article describes, but this is also what people _want_. Many people praise how luxurious some international airports are, especially when compared to ones in the US. Them serving as lush shopping malls is a big part of that.
Airport spending is also a huge economic driver for cities. So many taxes get shoved into purchases at airports and rental cars. Cities aren't going to just give that revenue up.
> Many people also don't know how to transit through security, given how little they travel. They need the three hours.
More and more are getting pre-check status since their credit cards pay for it. More than once I have been stuck behind a group (LAX Int'l terminal) where the middle aged male would hand a stack of 4-6 passports to the unlucky TSA person who will either be annoyed and purposely take their sweet time looking through the passports and handing them to each person and telling them they have to be the one to hand it over or hand them all back to the guy and tell him to give the passports to their owner to be checked, at which point there is a 50/50 chance (in my experience) that he will start arguing with the TSA person, throughly embarrassing the adolescent humans in the group.
The MyTSA app is great for getting average wait times, which check points are open/closed and instructions for how to do security. As someone else posted, Planning ahead pays off.
> Many people praise how luxurious some international airports are, especially when compared to ones in the US. Them serving as lush shopping malls is a big part of that.
One of my early international travel experiences was clearing customs at Amsterdam Schiphol and being dropped into a literal mall while looking for the train; it was one of my more bewildering and awestruck airport experiences
CLEAR is the new Precheck, though even that channel might get saturated as more premium credit cards offer credits for membership. CLEAR is a private company, however, so they could just add more membership tiers as subscriptions increase.