Your time or Corporate time?
 

The misguided TSA rules are obviously causing delays and making America as a country less efficient.

Now that we most likely have to check our bags and stand in line longer, I am wondering if those of us who travel quite a bit for business will change their viewpoint and booking behaviors of early morning outbound flights.

For example, until last week, I would take an 8AM flight out, having to leave my house at 7AM in order to drive to the airport, park in long term parking, walk to the terminal, go through security (with toothpaste) and get to my gate.

Now, I will probably just take a 10AM flight and get to my destination 2 hours later than normal, so I am pushing the TSA caused delays into my employer's time schedule, rather than getting up earlier, not seeing my kid and all.

How many of us, who have that flexibility, are doing the same rather than giving up more of their personal time to accommodate Jagoff Chertoff?

I'm with you - my morning flights are now at 10 am. It takes me an hour to drive to the airport and now that I need to check things in, I now have to wait in line, albeit the *A Gold Line, but I still have to wait in line to drop my luggage off. So for me, since I work from home, I leave the house at 8 am to deal with rush hour traffic, arrive at off-site parking, take the bus to the terminal and depending on traffic, I arrive at the terminal somewhere between 8:55 and 9:10 am. Now I still have to check in my luggage....

Definitely corporate time now.....

Media talking heads are advising travelers to choose the first flights out to avoid the build-ups in delays that might occur.

For a MR, I might take that 6:00 am flight to get a full day of flying in.

For any other purpose--business or leisure--I am NOT getting up that early. These restrictions, like previous posters have said, will basically just mean I move back my travel times accordingly.

This means I will also tack on an extra day to my business travel in many cases, costing my company (and ultimately the taxpayers, since they'll be billed by the company) for an extra night in a hotel. I might have taken the red-eye before, but now, I don't know if I'll have time for that. Guess I will just stay the night and fly home later.

^ I'm no morning person either. It's not the time, per se, it's the waking up part (which scared the recovery nurses during my last surgery ;) ) The only reason we made our 0600 flight by getting to the airport at 0500 was by me not getting up at 0400 but by me not sleeping the night before!

Upcoming trip next week is now going to have an extra day and a half added on which means one more hotel night, one more full day of per diem etc.

And of course, when one of your hungrier competitors is more willing to do the work you provide for less, you'll lose your government contract.

Of course, this may not apply to you specifically for a hundred different reasons, but in broad terms, it's the way the world works.

Wonder if someone could do an estimate of the lost productivity (hours) caused by this stupidity. Even if we assume that this adds 30 minutes to the time spent for each traveler (highly optimistic, I know) - what is the impact in terms of non-value added time for the American workforce?

For those who are bound to reply that it adds value by enhancing security, thank you for your response. I respect your opinion but that's not my opinion and is not what I'm hoping to calculate.

Just have to voice an opinion here:

Management has been extolling us to keep up the good fight. They know that this security change will impact us but say just "grin and bear it."

But the corporate web page is telling us to arrive at the airport four hours before our flight and to never ever check our laptops. However, us worker bees have been talking among ourselves. We just feel with the check luggage requirement has pushed us over the travel edge and will add two additional hours to each leg of our trips.

This group provides technical support to our sales force. As a group, we have decided that same day travel is out as well as night travel is out. We are now traveling on the day before customer meetings during normal business hours and the day after during normal business hours. We are not taking flights that put us at our destination after 6pm local time.

While we know that this action will have a direct impact on our personal sales commissions, we have decided to push back on the work / life balance scale.

If you think there are government contractors willing to sprint to the airport, skip dinner, and take a red-eye to save the government a night's per-diem, then you don't know government contracting. ;)

I don't know of any heavy business travelers who get paid by the hour, so it's a moot point to most. If it takes me three hours door to door or eight hours, I get paid the same, so any delay or additional time requirements takes away from personal time.

What I'm doing is a lot less travel in general (more Webex and con calls) and if I have to get on a plane, I try and make it a day trip.

Unless the airlines start complaining about water bans and such, it will be much more difficult to get TSA under control. Chertoff and company could care less if you have to spend an extra half-hour on the front end and another on the back end to take care of your toothpaste and check bags, and they could care even less if you are comfortable on a flight.

I doubt if the airlines will get too out of line, since half are in bankruptcy and the other half is paying off government loans and whatnot. It's pathetic but it is what it is.

I agree that most business travellers are not paid by the hour. I too, get paid the same for a 3 hour trip or an 8 hour trip.

But, assuming your work day is 8-5 and you leave your house at 7AM to get to the airport (pre 8/10) you are investing 1 hour of your personal time. If you now have to leave at 6AM to get to the airport at 8AM you lost an additional hour of personal time.
it seems that quite a few of us are now choosing to take a 10AM flight to deal with the TSA delays on corporate time, rather than personal time, so it does matter what time you fly, at least on the outbound, as the return was always on corporate time

At least you'll get your hotel diamond status faster now. :D

If it doesn't hurt your business, I'd take the later flight. Apart from the ban on liquids, things seem to be getting back to normal pretty quickly--there's lots of room in the overhead bins! :)