So I think it's clear to say, the show has changed.
In a lot of ways, this is a good thing. Times change, the show evolves, and things get better. However, one of the more notable thing about this show now is the drastic change in how airports and flights are handled. The early days of leaving teams to figure out which flights to take in order to get to a country ahead of the competition are no more. The options teams were capable of taking slowly got less and less, until these most recent seasons appear to not have given teams any choice at all.
Now before I go on, I will say that I understand why this was done, and I will tell you that the show will never go back to those old days. It was a very expensive and challenging aspect to the show, and the ability to film such an aspect only got more and more difficult as airport security continued to get tighter. Permits needed to be obtained to film in airports, and it just wasn't financially viable to obtain a permit for a connecting airport that would only be on screen for a few minutes. This method also tended to spread teams out too far sometimes, which required tasks to remain open for longer ($$$) and sometimes would just give the producers an episode with a foregone conclusion that wasn't as interesting to watch.
That being said, how should flights between countries be handled now? As my dad and I were watching TAR32, every single episode without fail my dad would say "All on the same flight, I HATE that". And I have to agree, especially since TAR32 was the first to have a flight on every single leg (plus the one train ride). There wasn't an incentive to finish higher on the leg, and there wasn't a punishment for coming in next to last. Everyone just started on equal footing for every leg.
But what are other options? Well, we can look to some international versions of the show who handle flights differently.
The most notable option is the one used in the Latin American version. When teams get to the departure airport, they have to write down their time of arrival on a white board. Then, after all teams are flown to the next location on the same flight, they leave the arrival airport with the same time differences. This basically treats flights the same as Pit Stops, and allows teams that are ahead to keep their lead. In some seasons this worked just fine, such as the first season and arguably the second season as well. There was still plenty of shuffling of positions and the race felt fair and competitive. However, there are flaws with this as well, because using this method completely eliminates bottlenecks from the Race. While we may not want to bunch teams up on every single flight, we DO want to have at least a few points in the race when everyone is tied for first. Otherwise we'll have another Bill/Joe moment. Look at the third season of the Latin American version. Just looking at its leaderboard, you can see a problem. From an early point, some teams got to the front of the pack and remained there for SIX straight legs. With no bottlenecks, they just got further and further ahead and couldn't be stopped, leading a team to win five out of the six first legs. It was only an HOO bottleneck on Leg 7 that changed this...but then the same thing happened again with a different team holding onto the lead. The reason this happens was that season 3 was a season with a tight budget and very little travel within the countries. Most legs took place in a very confined area with short taxi rides and quick, easy tasks.
The French version (and possibly some others I can't remember) took a similar approach. They also grouped all teams onto the same flight each time. However, at the arrival airports, they would release all of the teams in equally spaced intervals. I don't recall the exact time differences, but it was something like 1st place left, then 10 minutes later 2nd place left, and 10 minutes later 3rd place left, etc... This method worked out somewhat better, but it's hard to say how well it worked because the French version was such a disaster overall. Incidentally, this method of equally spaced release times is how the last two seasons of the Vietnamese version handle Pit Stops, and I believe there is mixed reception to this among its audience.
The Chinese and Vietnamese (excluding season 1) versions do away with flights entirely. One episode will end in Texas, and then the next episode will immediately begin in New Delhi, where teams will depart from a "new" Pit Start with the time differences they previously achieved in Texas...or in the case of the Chinese version, everyone just departs at once in a tie for first. Ignoring that little oddity, this does take out the problems of bunching on flights but just introduces some of the same problems seen in the Latin American version. Plus, there's just something about this method that makes the show feel less like a "Travel" show since it doesn't really show international travel.
Recent seasons of the Canadian version will sometimes group teams onto a flight but separate them into groups upon landing. IE, three teams leave immediately, three teams leave a half hour later, and two teams leave an hour later. I think this might work the best, honestly. However, it does end up feeling sort of "artificial" or "arbitrary", if that makes sense.
As a footnote, I do think that final legs should equalize all of the teams. There's just something more exciting and poetic about the final three teams being on equal footing as they hit home soil.
What do you guys think? For me, the only thing I know is that how this was handled in TAR32 did not sit well with me.