Comments on: The Larry Summers view of airports

By: gamlet

gamlet — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:12:26 +0000

So, you are a snob and an elitist if you prefer to spend hours and hours of your life in a functioning, 21st century facility instead of a dysfunctional shithole where nothing is done well?

It is like American airlines themselves. Are they crappy because they are old? No, they’re crappy because they are not run for the benefit of their consumers. The superiority of Asian carriers is about attitude; ditto their airports.

If there’s no edible food at JFK and there’s acres of sushi and champagne bars in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi it has nothing to do with how old JFK is. It’s because Americans don’t give a damn and Thais do. And to say that hub airports – by being opulent – don’t attract billions in revenue on many levels is highly questionable. I bet they do, and I’m sure they make money for their countries too.

But aside from that it’s also a question of pride. So American carriers and airlines are getting to feel distinctly third world. What’s the upside?

By: Publius

Publius — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:16:58 +0000

On the other hand, it could be a lot worse:

http://www.theonion.com/video/pragues-fr anz-kafka-international-named-worlds-mos ,14321/

By: GingerYellow

GingerYellow — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:41:59 +0000

American airports really are terrible though, at least for international travel. O’Hare’s international terminal, for instance, is one of the busiest in the world, and yet it has the feel of a tiny provincial airport. Almost all the (terrible) food is located on the land side of security, so if you get peckish while you’re waiting at the (uncomfortabe)gate you have to go back through security, which of course increases the wait for everyone else. It has almost none of the amenities you’d expect from a leading international airport. And God help you if you’re flying on a Sunday or out of office hours, because most of what there is will be shut.

By: MarshalN

MarshalN — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 03:01:29 +0000

Just because an airport is expensive doesn’t mean it has to be wasteful. Hong Kong International Airport is easily one of the best in the world, and it was also incredibly expensive to build. While not all of the airport’s efficiency comes from the cost (after all, it’s about the people doing the work as well) there’s certainly a non-zero correlation there as well.

By: maynardGkeynes

maynardGkeynes — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:12:58 +0000

I hate to agree with Larry, but after being stuck on the Hertz bus for 25 minutes in the wholly inadequate departure area at Logan today, I’m for better airports. This is ridiculous.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:11:10 +0000

“The really crucial infrastructure investment is in things like the national electricity grid” Is that why the US has so many brownouts?

There are limits to a throwaway culture where it is more important to extract profits for shareholders than it is to reinvest in the business. In some areas the US is in danger of copying the mistake made by British industry in the 1960s. A lack of reinvestment gifted many markets to the Japanese. Today, it’s China who benefits.

By: chrismealy

chrismealy — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:00:35 +0000

Summers should have just stolen Galbraith’s line about private opulence and public squalor.

By: KidDynamite

KidDynamite — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:38:05 +0000

“Summers isn’t really even the customer of the airports he’s passing through: the airlines are the customers, and the passengers are the goods being transported”

interesting thought. I guess it depends where you live. In NYC, for example, that’s not really true at all – you have 3 choices of airports, and I certainly considered myself a customer of them. I would regularly choose flights based on what I knew about the specific terminal that each airline flew out of at each airport.

I guess the vast majority of America doesn’t have choice like that though (maybe the SF Bay Area does too, with SFO and Oakland)

By: seewhydee

seewhydee — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:42:33 +0000

National governments, especially in developing countries, like to show off when it comes to the airports where luminaries like Summers arrive. But all that expense isn’t really necessary for the smooth functioning of the airport.

Except that US airports tend to be crummy AND dysfunctional. It's not a matter of "it's ugly but it works"; there really is a crisis in US air transportation infrastructure.