#4 It's a shift in the markets.

Between 1990 and 2018, base fares declined by 40%, despite increases in both fuel costs and taxes.

For those who are willing to trade money for a better flight experience, most airlines offer different classes of service. I'm flying from FRA-->LAS on Sunday, and 40% of the cabin space is premium cabin-with a total of 57 seats. The remaining 167 seats take up the rest of the cabin. And that's on a Delta jet. In my experience, you always get at least a little more legroom on Delta than you do on any of the others.

I'm Diamond with Delta, booked in Premium select. I'd be surprised if I didn't upgrade to Delta One. But I started flying Delta because when you fly on the government dime, you're always going to be in the back of the jet. And Delta had the best back-end service.

#8

I disagree. The US is too big. I live in Europe, and rail travel is almost always more inefficient from a time perspective, much of the time from a money perspective as well.

I can get from my house to my hotel in Prague by car in 5.5 hours. It would take me about that, at least, to fly (probably more), and just under 12 hours by train.

It would not make sense from a time perspective to travel from Boston to LA by train under almost any circumstances.

"How long is the high-speed train from Berlin to Prague? 4 hours to 4 hours 30 minutes' Thanks for playing, madbum."

There is no high-speed service between Berlin and Prague.

You can drive there faster than you can train there.

Unless your notion of "high-speed" is anything faster than a horse and buggy.