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then how does this explain flying? maybe people choose flying because its faster at the cost of loss of control
Individual planes have been made practically illegal for safety reasons.
People loved them to the point of fascination back when they were realistic to own though. Flying is miraculous after all. And they still love them in places where they're a logistical requirement.
Ask yourself, if you had the choice between your own private plane and airlines, would you pick the airline? I can see that people rich enough to be allowed to own planes certainly prefer them to airlines.
If I could buy and maintain an obsolete MiG for a few thousand rather than a few million I'd consider living out in the middle of nowhere just to justify it. Jets are beautiful machines even though for whatever reason people prefer ugly prop planes and radial engines and I've yet to figure out why- maybe they all look the same?
Jets are cool but they burn through fuel very fast, demand a lot more maintenance and pilot training and need large runways to takeoff.
The entry price isn't even that high anymore, I believe you can get an old A-4 for less than a mint condition Bf 109.
I think the main reason you see amateurs fly them less is the sheer operation costs and that a lot of old jets are death traps compared to prop warbirds.
You could buy a Fishbed for less than 100 grand. But you're going to pay like 12k an hour on fuel alone.
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Flying is so much faster that it can tip the scales. For me to drive to visit my parents would be a 15h drive, whereas it's a 2.5h flight (figure 4h total time with the waiting at the airport before the flight and all that. And I only live halfway across the country from my parents, not even on the other side! If the 4h flight was replacing a 5h drive then I would definitely drive. But I'm not going to choose to drive with how extreme the time savings from flying are.
The breakeven point for flying is anywhere from 6 - 8 hours depending on personal preference. With one major caveat.
First, the 6 - 8 hour number:
This is 2 - 4 hours of "overhead" (in the business sense) time. You are not traveling at 400 - 500 mph. You are making no meaningful "progress" towards your destination.
Spending 2 - 4 hours of "overhead" for a 1 hour flight (a 1 hour flight probably being in the neighborhood of 300 - 350 miles) is a think trade on time alone. A 300 - 350 mile drive, assuming mostly interstate travel, is 5 - 6 hours. So, while the advantage is still in air travel by maybe 2 - 3 hours (expected value), you have to factor in;
Flying, even an hour, is almost always a multiple hundreds of dollars expense. Yes, we all have that friend who has the story about getting a ticket to Paris for $43 dollars because he booked it on Christmas Eve or something. But the right expectation for an economy class ticket is $200 - 400 on the lower end for a 1 - 4 hour flight, booked well in advance. Add a checked bag fee. Add incidentals at the airport etc. And this is all for one person. As soon as you bring a friend or a spouse, everything doubles instantly.
But let's just go back to time alone. Let's say you're on a nice and easy 2 hour flight and your time/thru/from the airport on both sides is 1 hour. 4 hours total door to door. Good day. But let's say there are some delays, or you're a little neurotic so you leave an extra hour earlier and maybe this 1-2-1 turns into a 2-2-2. 6 hours.
A potential 6 hours and above average stress and frustration. Maybe we roll snake eyes and the flight is canceled altogether.
Versus a 6 hour drive that starts when I want it to and ends with me pulling into the driveway of wherever my final destination is. Unlimited pit stops in between. Snacks. My tunes and no one else's. I am Captain of the Car and not jammed in next to strangers in a high pressure can with leaky closet bathrooms.
It's an expected value play. A perfect flight trip is absolutely better on every metric and can be a wash to slight advantage on price. But a bad flight trip loses in every way. A median flight trip is mostly dependent on personal preference.
The variance on driving as a full experience is so much less.
However, once you get beyond 8 hours of driving, the returns to flying (by the same rubric) start to rise exponentially. Once you hit even just 12 hours of driving, you're probably talking about a potential hotel stay and you get into the area of actual injury risk due to fatigue.
The major caveat I mentioned at the top, however, is that flying is actually hugely dependent upon your final destination being within 60 - 90 minutes of the airport. Landing and then knowing you have another 2+ hours of travel through another medium of travel is, at least for me, massively demoralizing.
I have an uncle who lives 13 hours, by car, away. I try to visit him once a year. I planned out the plane-train-bus method of getting there. 8.5 hours. A likely 2-2-1 flight trip plus 3 hours in a rental car there. But then am I paying for NOT driving the rental car once I get there? No, wait, my uncle can just drive 6 hours round trip to get me. I just have to coordinate him. Hmm, maybe I can drop off the rental car a little closer to his cabin and then he meets me in betw--
No.
Me. car. Spotify. I'll stay in that dated by clean and quiet motel on the end of the first day. If I get up at 7am on day 2, I'll be at Unc's well before lunch.
Purely financially, a car trip will always be cheaper (unless you're talking something unusual like getting your car ferried across the ocean). So I don't think it makes any sense to even contemplate break even points here. The economic analysis is always going to say "car".
For what it's worth, I think that time to get from your airport to the destination is kinda cheating to include in the analysis. It really depends on how far out of the car route the airport is. If you're gonna have to drive past the airport either way (I would), them it's a wash. If you have a much more direct route by road then it could tip the scales some, but even then I don't think it's as simple as treating the entire distance from the airport to destination as flight overhead. You'd probably have to do some math to figure out how much more drive time the flight added versus going by car.
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