Subject: San Diego (was RE: Meetings in other regions)

From: "Burger, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:56:37 -0400

I would offer that it is easier for me to get to London, Paris, or
Frankfurt from New Hampshire than it is to get to San Diego.  LAX is
marginally better.

Chicago, Boston, New York, Toronto, Atlanta, and Las Vegas (!) are my
easy, one-hop cities.  That said, it was fun driving to Montreal :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Marshall Eubanks [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 8:45 AM
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Meetings in other regions

Hello;

On Jul 17, 2006, at 8:21 AM, <[email-masked]>  
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> John C Klensin wrote:
>
>> It also means such things as:
>>
>>     * picking places within those countries or regions that have
>>     good airports with easy (and multiple) international
>>     connections.  Even San Diego is a little marginal in that
>>     regard.  Based on experience in the last year or so, I'd
>>     suggest that Cape Town and Marrakech (suggested in another
>>     posting) should be utterly disqualified (although J-berg and
>>     Casablanca are more plausible on this dimension).
>
> Some data about San Diego: Today, the flight information page on San
> Diego "International" Airport web site shows a couple of flights
> to/from Mexico and a couple to/from Canada -- all the others are
> within US.
>
> When meeting in North America, I would strongly prefer cities that
> have several direct flight connections from both Europe and Asia.
> Of the recent IETF meeting places, San Diego is the only one that
> clearly fails this criteria... so why are we going there again?
>

Even direct flights within the US can be hard to find.

Depending on where you are coming from, and when you purchase your  
tickets,
you may find it faster / cheaper / better
to fly to LAX or Long Beach and drive down to San Diego. (LAX <-> San  
Diego is ~ 200 km, and LAX
is basically on the San Diego Freeway.) I did this for the one San  
Diego IETF.

If you do that, be aware that there is a permanent immigration  
checkpoint on the
San Diego freeway Northbound, which can cause backups returning.

Regards
Marshall

> Best regards,
> Pasi
>
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---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 22:17:29 -0400

Eric,

All I can say is that you're not looking very hard - I just spent all of 5
mniutes searching for tickets and found a nonstop between Boston and San
Diego for $418 on Alaska (this flight is also an American codeshare), and
single-connection flights from Manchester NH starting at $315 on Northwest,
Delta, and United.  These prices are all extremely reasonable for flights
that are about as far as you can go within the continental US.  These prices
are for flying out on Sunday 11/5 and returning on Saturday 11/11, so they
don't require a Saturday night stayover.

Cheers,
Andy

----------

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:44:11 +0200

Starting from Europe, San Diego seems to be no harder to reach
than any other major US city. The SPF route from Geneva
has two hops (e.g. via EWR or JFK).

I agree that major hub airports are a little easier to reach,
but maybe that's why we can get meeting space more easily
in non-hub cities?

     Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 06:45:42 -0700

> but maybe that's why we can get meeting space more easily

Meeting space is gotten more easily at hub cities when planning is done farther
in advance.

If a non-hub venue offers dramatic net price savings, fabulous facilities, or
some other strong justification, it makes sense to go there.

Otherwise, a non-hum city forces virtually the entire set of attendees to:

1. Experience an extra  flight, each way, with its attendant inconveniences and
risks (higher risk of lost luggage, missed connections, etc.)

2. Pay higher air fares, since secondary venues do not have the airline
competition that major hubs do.

3. Experience a higher risk of losing access completely, because of that lack of
airline competition... The primary airline to the non-hub might go on strike,
for example, as (nearly) happened to us in Minneapolis one time.

4. More generally, secondary venues have less total airline seating capacity and
the concentration of our 1200-1400 attendees flying in and out close together
usually has a noticeable impact on their flights.

d/

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:26:56 +0200

Dave,

> risks (higher risk of lost luggage, missed connections, etc.)
This is a something of a fair point, but if we were to limit our
conferences to hub cities when in the U.S., that would mean San
Francisco, LA, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington D.C,
and maybe Boston.  There's a trade off.  My absolute favorite location
for an IETF these many years was Santa Fe.  It was beautiful.  Aside
from the conference there was art, scenery, and history, including
Bandelier National Monument and the Sandia Mountains.  Santa Fe required
most of us to change planes, land in Albuquerque, and then drive for an
hour or so.  In as much as our size permits us to visit such locales,
it's a nice change of pace.  And honestly I think we all get along a
little better when we can see and do some fun things together outside of
work.
> competition that major hubs do.
This is not necessarily true.  Sometimes airfares are actually CHEAPER
for those spoke cities.  For instance, I have seen airfares to San Diego
that are cheaper than those to Los Angeles.  It's counter-intuitive and
demonstrates that one really has to be some sort of a clairvoyant to
understand airfares, but there it is.  My recollection is that the Savvy
Traveler and the Wall St. Journal have reported on this phenomenon.

> for example, as (nearly) happened to us in Minneapolis one time.

Minneapolis *is* a hub for Northwest.
> usually has a noticeable impact on their flights.

This is unlikely to be a problem, because we're merely the next
1200-1400 attendees that fly in, and in an area like San Diego we're one
of several conferences that will go on at the same time, I'm sure. 
What's more, the next 1200-1400 will begin to fly in as we depart.  So
the capacity is probably there.

Eliot

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:33:15 -0400

Dave,

Actually, airline hubs increase the risk of depending on a single airline,
since most hubs (at least in the US) are dominated by a single airline, such
as Northwest in Minneapolis and Detroit, US Airways in Philly and
Pittsburgh, American in Dallas, Delta in Altanta and Salt Lake City, America
West in Phoenix, United in Denver, and so on.  Chicago is one of the few
major US airports that is a dual hub (American and United).  And yes,
Minneapolis is a hub.

Cheers,
Andy

----------

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:15:43 -0700

> the capacity is probably there.

Sand Diego is the busiest single runway commercial airport in the United
states. it handles approximately 40,000 passenger arrivals/departures
per day with about 300 commercial flights arriving per day. 1/3 of all
flights are southwest which is the part that doesn't really help folks
connecting internationally.

If the entire IETF were to fly in Lindberg field on the same day that
would be approximately 5% of the seats. I would suspect that more people
than that fly in to visit seaworld  on a given day.

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:47:16 +0200

> competition that major hubs do.

I certainly don't fly as much as the next IETF-er, but in my  
experience, direct flights are almost always more expensive than  
indirect ones. Obviously a direct flight is much more convenient, but  
some indirect ones are actually pretty good while others are terrible  
and some direct flights are also pretty bad. Based on my experience  
past few years I would be happy to change planes again in Iceland  
(and probably in any other Schengen country where you only go through  
immigration when entering the Schengen zone initially) but not in the  
US if I can avoid it because either you have to build in ridiculous  
amounts of extra time or you run the risk of missing a connection  
because of the lines at immigration, especially at large airports  
such as JFK and LAX. As a rule, smaller is better, upto a point. This  
seems to go for the planes too, those 747 air-dinosaurs aren't very  
convenient, particularly with (un)boarding.

Another issue is ground transportation. I guess most people don't  
mind using a taxi, but having to stand in line for one isn't exactly  
what I need after an intercontinental flight...

All in all, San Diego seems like a pretty bad choice for a meeting  
place: it's even hard to get to from inside the US, and it's as far  
as you can get from Europe without leaving the continental US.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:56:28 -0400

> as you can get from Europe without leaving the continental US.

I'm not crazy about it either, but not because it's difficult to
get to.  Accessibility is a question of travel facilities, and
there are very nice places in the US that are a heck of a lot
harder to get to than San Diego, even on the east coast.  I live
in one of those places on the US east coast, and there are very
few places I can get to in Europe or Asia or even Canada without
having to change planes at least twice.  So, in terms of
reachability San Diego isn't that bad.  My disagreement with San
Diego is that the meeting facilities there have been consistently
lousy.

Melinda

---

From: "Clint Chaplin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:08:05 -0700

Another data point; San Diego is hosting Comic-Con this weekend:
they're expecting on the order of 100,000 attendees.

-- 
Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin
Wireless Security Technologist
Wireless Standards Manager

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:19:31 +0200

> they're expecting on the order of 100,000 attendees.

The weekend before the IETF?  Hey, that's an advantage!

---

From: "Clint Chaplin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:45:03 -0700

Whoops, sorry.  I meant the upcoming weekend when I wrote the message
(the weekend after the IEEE meeting).