While I believe you are not AMEX Platinum card or Priority Pass holder, if you fly American Airlines and want to dine at Centurion lounge or PP eligible restaurants at T3, you have to go through T3 security check at least once.
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Apple in Talks With United Airlines Over Terminal Upgrades at San Francisco International Airport
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I am an Apple manager (let us assume for the purpose of honing our imagination -- in actual fact I am a sketched cat with a watercolored martini) headed out to Shanghai and back. United, can you get us onto the plane and have us sitting in our seats when everyone else gets on? Just put this extra conference/boarding room into this terminal area, we will even help you design the whole thing! We guarantee the whole boarding will go a lot faster, too. I just do not want to check this bag, 'cause of what's in it. Say no more say no more!
Maybe Apple can brow-beat United into ditching the fifty different flavors of prioritized boarding and go with the Mythbusters-proven method.
they probably did and turned down the idea. likely they need 50 seats at various times of the day. would need several private jets to recreate that convenience.
Have you ever traveled to see your parents/children/relatives/friends? Why didn't you just videoconference over the internet?
Probably, but running against a philosophy of reducing their carbon footprint. 50 seats per day is a lot, but that plane would be flying regardless if they took those 50 seats.
If I were United, I would create a club room specifically for them, all decked out. Concierge, personalized check in, baggage retrieval, all custom. Get them entrenched in the United ‘ecosystem’.
I'm still wondering why Apple has this many people flying to China every day.
Obviously an employee isn't flying to China and back in a single day... then turning around and flying to China again tomorrow. It's a 13-hour flight... one way.
So that means 50 people fly from SFO to Shanghai on a Monday... and 50 different people fly on a Tuesday. And 50 more people fly on a Wednesday... etc...
It seems like Apple would have a headquarters in that part of the world... and keep some employees there for a whiile... rather than flying a couple hundred employees back and forth across the ocean every week.
But I dunno... I'm not a CEO... nor a flight logistics director.
Obviously an employee isn't flying to China and back in a single day... then turning around and flying to China again tomorrow. It's a 13-hour flight... one way.
So that means 50 people fly from SFO to Shanghai on a Monday... and 50 different people fly on a Tuesday. And 50 more people fly on a Wednesday... etc...
It seems like Apple would have a headquarters in that part of the world... and keep some employees there for a whiile... rather than flying a couple hundred employees back and forth across the ocean every week.
But I dunno... I'm not a CEO... nor a flight logistics director.
No way. Passengers that pay more don't want to lose the perks like being able to get their bags in the overhead bins, while later boarders have to check their bags and wait for their luggage.
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I prefer to just use my iPad and stream the plane's entertainment to it.
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Too expensive, and putting too many employees in one basket. Often companies will put execs on the same team on different flights to mitigate the risk of a loss flight.
I'd argue that United likely gives Apple kickbacks for choosing them as their default airline. Plus, Apple isn't stuck maintaining a jetliner on the ground and each flight hour. You'd also need 2-3 jets. Specifically, you'd need a long range aircraft to avoid multiple stops.
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They have an Apple China office. Some multi-story building and some R&D center(s).
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Expat employees = $$$$$$. The company has to pay for their foreign housing, relocation expenses both ways, a foreign car/travel allowance, cost of living allowance, medical evacuation and personal insurance, immigration services, tax compensation, trips back home twice a year, and education costs for their kids (e.g. to cover boarding school). Then a salary increase/bonus for all their hassle.
One of the guys I used to work with specifically got a expat assignment timed with his kid going to college. As a result, the organization he worked for paid 100% of his kid's college tuition, on the order of $150k.
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Accidentally revealed? Didn’t they print it on a banner? Kind of hard to walk that back by saying “How did your corporate travel account get listed there? When we sent it out to print it read ‘you will be forcibly dragged from the plane if we find a better customer for your seat’”.
All I could think when I read the article was: “no new terminal is going to fix the travel experience...”
I doubt Appl pays full retail price for tickets even if they did you can't operate a private jet for the cost of 50 tickets and what 50 seat jet can fly non-stop on that route?
They're going to Shanghai, not Singapore. Big difference in distance. And 50 seats requires a much smaller jet than 300, see business jets.
Maintenance and spares are easily outsourced to an airline. Passenger airlines do this regularly for smaller destinations. All of the major airlines even outsource their heavy maintenance to some degree.
Home | United Technical Operations
United Technical Operations is the maintenance, repair and overhaul division of United Airlines. We bring over 85 years of MRO experience, employee talent and operational integrity to our customers.www.unitedtechops.com
A big thing now is manufacturer support contracts ("power by the hour") where parts and major maintenance are their problem.
Taxes may be lower because of the inherent difference in taxation. Ticketed flights are taxed as a percent of airfare, non-ticket flights pay a tax on fuel.
Long-haul planes have much lower utilization than short haul since you can't push in extra flights, when their flights are 13 hours long, and you want the times aligned to minimize jet lag.
DaimlerChrysler ran a daily all-business A319 between Detroit and Stuttgart, back when the company existed.
No, narrowbodies are perfectly fine. SFO-PVG is 5300 NM, A319CJ does 6,000 NM, albeit with lower payloads. A319neo and A321XLR is now an option.
Another option is to simply make a tech stop, see BA1.
Thanks , didn’t realize there was a 319 that could do 6,000nm. The XLR is not being offered in an ACJ currently.
Well Apple doesn't have a lot of (American) choices from SFO to Asia, besides United. If they really want to fly AA or DL they should hop to LAX first.
Nice start. Now if they could just do something about United's Newark and Dulles hubs on the east coast. Perhaps SF can be the guinea pig and the design concepts can carry over. For United's part, update your fleet.
I fly United all the time as well. The problem is that United's US Regional fleet and regional partnerships are just hot garbage. Some of the worst flying experiences around.
Their larger jets are all pretty great and their lounges are generally fantastic, though.
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You do know that the Port Authority is dumping billions into Newark, right? Terminal C is great compared to what it used to be (although not yet done). They are also building a brand new terminal as well. They are spending $3B to replace Terminal A with the new Terminal 1. They will then demolish A and build a new A to replace it. Terminal B is also going to be replaced with Terminal 2. So you'll end up spreading out the passengers, finally, from the two main Domestic terminals into three.
Combine that with the PATH extension from WTC to EWR and it'll be a very nice set-up.
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