On a recent trip to Asia with my son, we traveled 19000 miles on Singapore Airlines. The airfare for each round-trip ticket was $1000 total. An incredible bargain for that distance traveled.
The math will tell you that riding in an Airbus A-380 and a Boeing 777 for 6 flights totaling all those miles in economy class worked out to slightly more than 5 cents per mile.
If I traveled in some fashion from where I am sitting in Phoenix to Los Angeles on a budget of 5 cents per mile, it would cost me about $15 total. I'm not sure how I could possibly do that other than riding a bicycle non-stop, finding water along the way, barely eating, and skipping any sort of lodging - even Airbnb.
No other form of transportation comes close to the efficiency and safety of modern air travel. Maybe the price of my ticket was subsidized by a government such as Singapore. I don't know. But I sat for a total of 42 hours in a reasonably comfortable seat, reading, watching movies, eating a decent meal every few hours and consuming a dozen or so adult beverages. I was safer riding in the plane than wading in an ocean, hiking a mountain trail, riding in an automobile or stepping through my bathroom.
The 'good old days' don't even come close to providing this level of comfort or safety for long distance travel.
5 cents a mile. Astounding.
