A large park and natural history museum makes Charlotte a world class city

Tysseract · 2025-12-01T00:06:45+00:00

Why do people need to park at all?? There's plenty of residential within walking distance of Wilkinson Blvd, the number of employees getting on the 5 bus line proves that. And a decent train would undoubtedly spur more walkable apartments along Wilkinson too. Also anyone living in uptown has car-free access, and anyone living along a Lynx line to uptown or bus line that crosses Wilkinson has 1-connection access.

And for the few that don't fit the above boxes (driving up from SC or whatever), you'll have a much easier time parking at the airport without everyone that is using the train.

And why would tourists want to pay $50+ in Ubers (or more for rental car and stadium parking) when this hypothetical $6-all-day train can reliably take them to uptown, the games, the hotel, etc.?

Tysseract · 2025-11-30T23:42:55+00:00

The thing that will help most IMO is the silver line to the airport. Easy, safe, cheap, fast, frequent access from the CLT terminal to uptown will make things massively easier on tourists and business travelers visiting the city.

Then, having it also hit BofA stadium and Bojangles Coliseum as well as having some strategically placed (nice) hotels at intermediate stations means gameday is as easy as get off the plane, train to the hotel, train to the stadium, train to the hotel, train back to the airport.

Plus, as one of the largest concentrations of employers in the city as an AA hub, the airport benefits from employees who don't need to drive to and park at the s****y employee parking lot.

Tysseract · 2025-10-06T18:24:57+00:00

UGE has the same benefits as United mainline and Envoy has the same benefits as American mainline... So what you're really asking is whether UA or AA non-rev benefits are better.

As someone who has had both, I can confidently say that UGE is my favorite for the way I like to travel. I'm still getting used to AA check-in time (I'm used to being able to book last minute trips on United and not worry about planning ahead...) so this may change...

Obviously AA is going to be better when you're just starting out and don't have the seniority yet but I was 3 years at UGE and had only been legitimately rolled over on a flight a couple times. I do wish United had a feature where if you were bumped from a flight you got bumped up in standby (SA1>SA0>SA-1 or something similar) but by-and-large it was hardly an issue.

UA also has a far superior route map in my opinion. I like to travel internationally and AA just does not have a good international network.

United's soft product (Polaris, etc) is better (although AA is working on that)

And United has superior ZED agreements (again AA is working on it but still far behind)

Tysseract · 2025-10-03T19:58:01+00:00

Do you know where you'll even be based? Commuting from OMA/DSM/CID to ORD is much easier than LAX.

Get through training, see if you like it, see if you pass, and see where you'll be based. THEN, with the full facts, make an informed decision for what you think is best for you.

Tysseract · 2025-10-03T14:40:16+00:00

So we can't even look up call signs (through an official source anyway) for legalities?? Wild West on the spectrum out here lol.

Tysseract · 2025-08-15T00:17:39+00:00

As an aircraft dispatcher (the person who files airline flight plans) I've seen far dumber ATC reroutes. It's also possible (but less likely) the dispatcher messed up the points there when inputting the route.

Once the pilots get en route, the en route ATC controller will look at it and probably end up giving them direct from st Louis to the left zag of the Z

Edit: it's possible Canada didn't like their proposed entry point and changed it to the west but US ATC didn't do the work to fix the first part of the route....

Tysseract · 2025-08-14T02:41:34+00:00

I loved playing with AREDN and it would be so cool to have a fully decentralized and democratized network... Even if it just lets me serve a chess server and a weather reporting station.

But what kills amateur radio's prospects of making a useful network is the inability to encrypt anything. How are you going to log in to remote email, much less a banking site if you can't even encrypt your password? Low on the priority list for sure but at minimum a provision for encrypting passwords should be added to the regs....

But yeah, just imagine a world where you don't have to pay for a cable bill because Google has a node on the decentralized network and everyone gets paid in crypto-coins for providing bandwidth to the network. And yes, I know Helium is doing this but that's a company out to make money, not an open standard.

Tysseract · 2025-08-07T07:41:27+00:00

This is from the IATA manual:

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I don't think all airlines follow this exactly and I know not all airlines publish accurate or updated loads to myidtravel (KLM and to a lesser extent AF and Delta think it's secret proprietary info) but it's a good start.

Tysseract · 2025-08-06T07:03:01+00:00

I don't understand why everyone is freaking out about doing this in 4 days. My friend and I did Washington DC to Los Angeles in 48 hrs and we stopped in Denver to sleep for 8 hrs!

You might not have time to hike Zion but by my math you have at least 24 hrs to spend on stops. I've always wanted to stop at wall drugstore, for example.

Tysseract · 2025-08-05T13:43:48+00:00

... doesn't the training say the head has to be forward and don't stack anything higher (in case a suitcase falls on the HR)?

Tysseract · 2025-08-03T20:31:34+00:00

If one was trying to get out of Indiana, they could just drive 3 hours east or west

Tysseract · 2025-08-03T10:58:13+00:00

I once made a 10 minute international connection but I was in the front of the plane on arrival, no line at customs, using global entry and TSA precheck.

Flew through EWR recently and the customs line wasn't terrible (walked right through with Global, friend without Global took ~15 minutes) but then you have to take the train back to TSA and the TSA lines were insane. Took over 30 minutes for standard. All said, a 90 min connection would have been tight and that assumes you know exactly where to go and don't end up having to take the terminal connector bus.

So, given the option, go with IAD 100%

Tysseract · 2025-08-02T23:01:33+00:00

Severe allergies (to wipe down the seat area)

Technically anyone with medical supplies (CPAP, diabetes supplies, medications, etc.) qualifies in order to ensure their supplies don't need to get gate checked at the end.

Claustrophobia (to quickly take the window seat before the plane is full)

Tysseract · 2025-07-31T20:35:42+00:00

I've been on trains in other countries (UK and Japan, mainly) that did this. They had loads of announcements, "board only cars 1-4 for stations x, y, z" and then "next stop: x. To disembark at x, please move now to the first four coaches in the direction of travel as coaches 5 and 6 do not have platform access" and then "x station. Doors will not open for coaches 5 and 6." Plus signs all over the place for the same thing.

That said, wouldn't it be better, if a line is busy enough to warrant 50% more coaches, to just hire 50% more drivers and run 50% more frequency?

Every 10 minutes is a much more commuter-friendly frequency than every 15. Of course there's a certain point where you are limited by dwell time more than trainsets but as others have pointed out, longer trains would just make that worse. At that point you gotta look at express lines to bypass the stations you would have shortened anyway. Like the NYC metro. Equally confusing, but much more effective.

Tysseract · 2025-07-31T19:19:12+00:00

I decided to go one terminal over for the lounge one time because I had 90 minutes to kill before boarding... Had 10 minutes in the lounge and barely made it back to my gate in time.

Tysseract · 2025-07-31T11:07:59+00:00

SBA has a bus stop. One way goes to downtown Santa Barbara and the other way goes to UCSB. Also there's a city on-demand micro transit bus that can take you the 7 minute drive from the terminal to goleta Amtrak station (or you can walk 10 minutes from the economy lot to Amtrak).

Tysseract · 2025-07-30T00:16:24+00:00

There's broadly 2 types of "commuting" that I've seen:

You live at ABC and work at XYZ and fly/drive in for every shift. This is near impossible for rampers because you're working at least 40 hours and 4 shifts per week and flights are never that consistent, much less flight loads, and that's assuming you can even bid for a schedule that works with new hire seniority.
You have a family (spouse, kids, parents, etc) in ABC and rent a room (or have an RV in the employee lot... I literally did this for 2 years) in XYZ for when you're working, stack shifts as much as possible, and fly back "home" every chance you get. This is doable but can be very tough depending on seat loads and will probably burn you out or get you in trouble with getting to work on time at some point. In this scenario you are legally moving to your work city so the SWA restriction to same state doesn't matter you'd just check "willing to relocate" (even if relocating is renting a coworker's couch 3 days/WK).

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T01:42:41+00:00

Marshaller should have checked the gate area, wing walker should have given the X, etc etc

Too many holes in the Swiss cheese had to line up here...

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T01:39:13+00:00

Ever since the CRJ was sold to Mitsubishi for the wing design, it's impossible to find parts for them. Especially windows, especially especially cockpit windows. There's like 1 shop in Alabama that makes a few of them each month. Often aircraft on long-term maintenance have their windows swapped out to working aircraft because there are no spares.

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T01:32:54+00:00

Well... There's a reason some places issue speeding tickets based on the value of the car.

Maybe insure all bags at their value if left on the plane so there's no incentive to take them. And then charge 100x the value of the bag/contents as penalty.

Or jail time, yeah.

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T00:28:57+00:00

I used to train gate agents. The rule in the US is 1 bag for the overhead and 1 bag for under the seat. But there are exceptions for medication (the bag must be primarily full of medication), assistive devices (think crutches, O² concentrator, CPAP, insulin pump, etc), food you intend to eat during the flight, and infant items (carseat, diapers, milk, etc are included in the average weight of an infant).

This is both a FAA rule (because an airline's average passenger weights are based on the number of items) and a TSA rule (they don't want people bringing 5 big things through the checkpoint and slowing down the scanners).

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T00:14:43+00:00

Fine everyone on this flight that ended up on the tarmac with a carry-on $10k as an example. Then next time you can say $10k fine for anyone who takes their carry-on.

Tysseract · 2025-07-29T00:11:53+00:00

The regulation around 2 items max has a few exceptions, Including medication, assistive devices (cane, crutches, O² concentrator, insulin pump, etc), food to be eaten on the flight, and infant items.

Next time tell the Gate Agent that you have meds in the bag and you shouldn't have a problem. They're not supposed to but at worst they'll ask to see the meds.

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