WATMM travel thread

[chenGOD]

On 11/24/2020 at 9:01 AM, zkom said:

I've been flying domestic in Finland during the 'rona times due to work trips. So far flying has been cheaper than going by train. The 600km trip up to north and back is about 70-80€ by plane with just the carry-on baggage. By train the same trip is around 100€. Using a bus would be incredibly cheap but it takes fucking forever and the cheap buses are very uncomfortable compared to trains or even planes.

Train might be more expensive, but better for the environment....

[zkom]

2 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Train might be more expensive, but better for the environment....

It sure is, but it's company paid travel so they get to choose. Also there's the 6 hours by train or 1 hour by plane difference. Planes of course have the check-in, security check, etc stuff, so it's not exactly 5 hour difference. Now during the pandemic there's also the fact that the plane is maybe 25% full with enforced mask policy, whereas the train is fully packed for about 3 hours from Helsinki to the mid-point and there's no enforced mask policy, just a recommendation which everybody don't follow.

I sometimes travel that trip for personal reasons and then I take the train, but fuck it was scary the last time I did that and the train was 100% sold out with half the people not wearing masks.

Maybe the big question is how the fuck is the plane cheaper than the train?

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, zkom said:

It sure is, but it's company paid travel so they get to choose. Also there's the 6 hours by train or 1 hour by plane difference. Planes of course have the check-in, security check, etc stuff, so it's not exactly 5 hour difference. Now during the pandemic there's also the fact that the plane is maybe 25% full with enforced mask policy, whereas the train is fully packed for about 3 hours from Helsinki to the mid-point and there's no enforced mask policy, just a recommendation which everybody don't follow.

I sometimes travel that trip for personal reasons and then I take the train, but fuck it was scary the last time I did that and the train was 100% sold out with half the people not wearing masks.

Maybe the big question is how the fuck is the plane cheaper than the train?

The packed out trains thing during a pandemic is a good point.

Just shows you how big the profit margins are for airplane companies.

[zkom]

14 hours ago, chenGOD said:

The packed out trains thing during a pandemic is a good point.

Just shows you how big the profit margins are for airplane companies.

If the governments are serious about reducing CO2 emissions maybe they should not be giving tax breaks and subsidizing the air industry so heavily? Air travel would be more expensive than train travel if they were taxed the same way. The kerosene fuel used in the planes is tax-exempt throughout the world, including Finland. Normal automobile fuel is taxed over 50% of price in Finland so why the fuck is the airplane fuel completely tax-exempt? Of course flying is cheaper than using trains for long distances when the system is set up to support airlines so heavily.