The airplanes this is about mostly are relatively fuel efficient. They burn a lot of gas per hour, but they also go faster than a car and so per distance efficiency is about the same as a gas car.
Jets are different - they go a lot faster. Commercial jets when full are about the same as a small car. Private jets generally have much less people on board, if you filled them to capacity with people they do well.
Cars aren't going to get you across the atlantic. And planes tend to be more efficient overall than cars in long hauls efficiency wise, both in people carried, and overall efficiency/emissions. Those turbofans are much more efficient at approaching the carnot limit than your small car engine is. Scale matters.
A 3 passenger car at 25 MPG significantly beat airlines in fuel efficiency per passenger mile assuming reasonably direct routes.
Busses and trains both crush aircraft from a physics standpoint assuming similar occupancy. Though of course with very low occupancy per cabin things can shift.
Cars move in a 2-dimensional space (surface), aircraft move in a 3-dimesional space (without costly highways), so you can utilize space way more efficiently and move more people per square mile.
The safety distances will probably reduce due to automated collision-avoidance systems which may become mandatory in dense flight areas.
Although, I don't know how planes compare to cars in terms of energy utilization efficiency. A car only needs energy to move. A plane needs energy to move and stay above the ground.
That's about right, though there are a few additional considerations:
1. Aircraft have heaviest fuel use during takeoff and ascent. Short flights are the least efficient. I'm not aware of a good modeling for this, but you might consider that there's a fixed takeoff/landing/taxi cycle and a variable cruise component to most flights. Also, larger aircraft (at capacity) tend to be more efficient than smaller ones, though that's a fairly varyable dynamic.
2. Automobiles offer numerous other capaibilities (and limitations). Generally, more cargo, and more direct transit. With airport delays adding 1-3 hours to a flight, that's 150 miles / 240 km of ground travel possible at highway speeds.
3. More luggage capacity / fewer restrictions. You can carry items on a car you couldn't on an airplane.
4. Point-to-point service. Aircraft fly to airports. Cars drive to specific addresses. That's another consideration in on-ground time, possibly several hours, in a flight. Autos start looking viable for trips of 200-250 mi / 320 - 350 km.
5. There are larger autos availabe. Five adults in a small compact might not be reasonable, but might consider an SUV or van. And efficient choice here would make up for lower fuel economy with higher passenger capacity.
Aircraft still generally win on safety on a pro-rated distance basis.
A fully loaded aircraft gets pretty good fuel economy per person, at least as good as a Prius. I've seen figures from 50-100mpg depending on aircraft and of course how fully loaded it is.
So it's basically like driving a little less than the flight distance.
Interesting theory, but I was about to say that oil burned per person mile is higher for airplanes than for cars. It seems that this is old info however; since 2005 airplanes have indeed been more efficient, in the US at least. [0]
I should add that I agree that the hassle at checkout is becoming a impediment to flying, but I still don't believe your theory. I believe the most important driving force paradoxically may be the airlines (in addition to the surveillance state), in a drive to give passengers the sense of security they need to keep flying, it was always a sensitive issue.
There are always tradeoffs... airplanes move more or less at a steady speed, and are much more aerodynamic than cars, which spent quite a bit of time stuck in traffic. Thus in many cases planes are more efficient than cars (despite needing to lift).
I checked it out and the number seems about right(like up to 2x but not too much). So, to beat an airplane on fuel efficiency you need to be at least 2 persons on an extremely fuel efficient small car.
Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side of things.
Unless the infrastructure and operational costs of trains are higher than airplanes, I don't see how airplanes can be more competitive. Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive?
Maybe the argument can be made about convenience but on efficiency, trains look more efficient.
Indeed. The mpg per person for a modern passenger plane is better than the average US car (assuming a single-person journey by car). The most important factor here is miles travelled, not the mode of transport used.
A small plane can carry 1-4 people at 120 MPH consuming about 11 gallons an hour, for a "MPG" of about 11 (miles in the air don't exactly translate to ground because air flows but it evens out over time).
Even with modern efficiencies available, I doubt they'd do more than double that, so a car would still easily win, unless the car had one person in it and the plane 4.
I'll point out that although it's indeed atrocious compared to a train ride, flying is still more efficient than driving a car. So if traveling is required and you're debating between driving vs. flying (say SF <-> LA), you should prefer flying unless you can carpool. I don't know the exact numbers since it depends on where you're going and what plane/airline you fly, but I would expect around 50-75 MPG for a reasonably full airplane [1], whereas your car might be more like 25-30 MPG on the highway, so you'd want at least 2-3 (ideally 4) people in the car to make it more efficient.
However the thing about flying is of course that it burns fuel at a much, much faster rate, so if it means the difference between you driving to workplace A vs. flying to workplace B regularly, then you'll be burning one hell of a lot more fuel by flying.
This doesn't change flying being a more efficient means of travel. Despite many incentives to carpool and take public transportation, planes are still more efficient because the high travel speed makes being packed like sadines worth it
A fully booked jetliner is consuming less fuel per traveled distance than a car with one person in it. They're not as bad as you might think they are. The amount of delivery driving has definitely increased with corona, but there's less people commuting to work.
Jets are different - they go a lot faster. Commercial jets when full are about the same as a small car. Private jets generally have much less people on board, if you filled them to capacity with people they do well.
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