Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security

New York Times ^ | 5/2/2016 | Jad Mouawad

[ssapro]

Abolish the TSA right along with the IRS. We don’t need “Thousands Standing Around” just to keep people off the welfare rolls. Get rid of the IRS and go to a flat tax. Make everyone pay the same percentage and no more tax breaks for big business.

[Blue Jays]

That totally gives you time to hit it in the private lounge prior to departure by arriving that early!

[bgill]

No, thanks. I’ll drive.

[Savage Beast]

When Trump is elected and has slashed the Gordian Knot, I hope the stupid airline security procedures are among the first to be discarded.

Airline companies should profile suspicious people and not inconvenience--to say nothing of harassing and sexually violating--innocent men, women, and children!

[Just mythoughts]

IF we as a nation are not careful, elected officials, will create a ‘bathroom’ security department. Imagine those government unionized jobs.

[hecticskeptic]

Really? So your company completely ignores the time to travel and treats all work assignments on an equal footing regardless of where they are? So does that end meaning that you just do local projects where travel time isn’t an issue? What if a client asked you to do a trip to some place overseas that takes 24 hours of travel to get there and 24 hours to get back.... and the time there is only for say a day? Between the planning, the return travel and the recovery time, this will take up the better part of a week....all so that one day of time could be billed? I can’t imagine how that can work profitably.

[L,TOWM]

Heathrow was a dammed nightmare when I went through it in 2012. Granted, it was two months before the Olympics, but I asked one of the people “ramping this up some before the big event, right?” The response was “Oh not really sir. It’s been like this for the last few years.”

[Hulka]

Terminal 3 to Terminal 5?

[Patriotic1]

I've worked at several companies that have this practice, including Deloitte Consulting. Assignments are based on project need, availability, etc. Helps to live near a hub. I've had short commutes, all day commutes, etc.

Overseas is infrequent, but trips would last 2 weeks. The nature of the business is longer term projects so we wouldn't got for a day. Would a sales guy do a 1 day mtg 24 hours away? India would be the main place, and I'm sure they'd find a local salesperson. I almost went to the UK for a week of meetings, but that got canceled.

I bill 40 hours in a week, and travel time has always been my own, even when I was an IC.

[hecticskeptic]

Ok... your scope and criteria is quite different and more big company thinking where costs are more easily put into overhead than small company thinking where costs are more directly allocated to projects (to some extent). Lets say you have a company that offers services worldwide but there are only say 20 employees. Let’s say that the work the company does is troubleshooting in nature where when one gets to a site somewhere on the planet, it might take them a few hours to sort out the problem or a few weeks. I think the only sensible approach at that point is that when someone goes to a jobsite and the project is billed on a time and expense basis, then one bills from the time the employee leaves until they return (at least all the time they are traveling and working on the jobsite (minimum 8 hour per day). Competitive pressures might force one to take a different approach but when a company hires a specialist to solve a problem, they typically expect to pay for the travel time as well since that is part of the requirements of the project..... at least that has been my experience.