[speedyapoc]

With commercial air travel being so unreliable, this makes sense.

I've travelled quite a bit over the past few months and had to deal with an elevated level of delays, cancellations, etc. For those that need to be at a certain place at a certain time, and can afford it, private air travel makes sense.

Private also has its benefits. I remember last year that commercial air travellers into Canada were being put in quarantine hotels whereas private air travellers were not subjected to such measures.

[bronco21016]

> With commercial air travel being so unreliable, this makes sense.

That seems a stretch. Commercial air travel in the US is unbelievably reliable, and furthermore, safe.

I’m not sure you can measure reliability in private aviation as the schedule is entirely ad hoc but the airlines are nearly always >98% completion with a few consistently >99.5%.

Factor in safety and it’s not even comparable. There has been one death on a commercial airline due to an incident related to operation of the aircraft since 2008 (the Southwest aircraft that had a RUD of the engine leading to a woman being sucked from the window). Compare that with private aviation which still has a few accidents a year at a minimum despite drastically fewer operations.

While I wouldn’t argue private flying is something to be avoided, statistically speaking, it would appear that travel aboard a US airline is the safest and likely among the most reliable means of traveling in the US.

[downut]

In the last 4 years (I intentionally include the 2 years before COVID), I have had at least one side of every multi-connection across the pond itinerary destroyed by either AA or UA. That is, delays longer than 12 hrs, advances of start of travel by 6hrs while making the trip overall 18hrs longer. UA has, several times, degraded our friends' return itineraries in the same way less than 12 hours before travel; can't easily cancel. On BA I had a just fine economy+ window seat LHR->PHX destroyed by an at-the-gate reseating to the aisle center bulkhead next to 2 children that screamed and kicked the seats the entire flight. Thanks to the goddess for Bose earphones.

Well that time the BA 747 blew an engine on take-off and we circled the desert for an hour, dumping fuel until landing back at PHX, to a ground stopped airport with emergency vehicles lining the entire runway? Well, I can't fault that too much, we did make it down. One does wonder about maintenance, tbh. The 24hr delay didn't seem like the most important detail.

It is so bad that we have begun contemplating the notion of eliminating our 3-4 weeks of EU vacation a year, then buying a big blue-water catamaran and start sailing it for our adventures. Since we are absolutely in love with many EU cities this is a drastic change for us.

So yeah, commercial air travel is very unreliable. Safety is good, but not the only mandatory criteria.

Ah yes, very fresh anecdotage: we were taking sailing lessons last week and one of our classmates is an AA flight attendant. Confirmed all of the above and it happens to them too.

[Edit: bunch of typos. This topic makes me enraged.]

[sokoloff]

> There has been one death on a commercial airline due to an incident related to operation of the aircraft since 2008

That's close, but not precisely correct. In addition to SWA 1380, there was one death on PenAir 3296 in 2019 and 50 fatalities on Colgan Air 3407 in Feb 2009. All of those were US-operated Part 121 flights. (There were also many non-US commercial airline fatalities in that period, but I'll give you that in context you were referring only to flights operated by US airlines above.)

[bronco21016]

I misremembered Colgan being 2008. I don’t recall the PenAir incident, I’ll look it up. Thanks for the corrections.

Not to minimize those lost but the point remains, chance of death on a US based 121 carrier is basically a rounding error.

[ghaff]

Airline schedules have certainly been more erratic over COVID with at least a couple of well-publicized major disruptions at a couple different airlines. That said, things seem to be running relatively smoothly at this point and I haven't personally had any issues.

[danielfoster]

Schedules, not aircraft, have been notoriously unreliable.

[Scoundreller]

Canada lets US-origin private flights land at a lot of random airports where the customs process is pretty much “call us before you arrive and we’ll send someone over only if we feel like it”.

(Yes, you do have to be pre-approved for this, but if your record is clean, it’s a formality). They even have a corporate program that lets you bring in a handful of unscreened non-members.

All for $40 for 5 years. My driver’s license renewal costs more than double that.

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/prog/canpass/menu-eng.html

[skybrian]

I don’t know anything about business jets, but bad weather can result in changed plans however you fly, and especially with smaller planes. Deadline pressure is a good way for a private pilot to get killed due to a bad judgement call.

[jcrawfordor]

As a rule of thumb, the smaller the aircraft, the less its tolerance for rough weather conditions. Commercial airliners may be the most capable aircraft in regular use for handling bad weather, exactly because passengers expect to not be delayed by storms so airlines are willing to pay for all of the weather handling features, their own meteo staff, etc.