Its not that flying isn't needed. It is in some cases. Driving, based on the way we have set up our world in the past century or so, is required, as well. Its a matter of need versus want. For example, I know people who get into their cars and drive a mile to the local Wawa, purchase a gallon of milk, and drive home. There is no reason to do that. One can walk a mile to the local Wawa, purchase a gallon of milk, and walk home. Contrary wise, if one is driving a mile to the local FoodTown, purchasing a cart load of goods, and driving back, driving makes more sense. As the distance, number of people, and weight of load increase, so does the case for driving.
Flying has its place, certainly. For the majority of people, crossing the Atlantic ocean requires flying. Which is fine- its actually more efficient then taking a luxury cruise ship. Its not more efficient than taking a freighter- the marginal fuel use for your presence on the vessel would be so tiny that it would require a good calculator to display the decimal. My preference is the freighter.
If you are flying for business, the item in question, without exception, requires human face to face contact, the urgency of you being there is such that time is imperative, and the distance travelled means that the decrease in useful time from other methods is great (or even existent), then flying makes sense. For most flights people take, a video conference would suffice, to be honest with you. In fact, with the decreasing economy and flight availability, I think thats where a notable percentage of long-distance business flyers will go.
For business, if I need to get from New York to Los Angeles, with strong time sensitivity, and the need is non-contestable, there is no question of how one should travel. Flying, given our general current infrastructure (meaning, excluding the construction of massive high-speed rail lines), is frankly the only sane option. I wouldn’t, but I’m a kook.
However, lets say I need to get from New York to Chicago, ok? With government investment of half a billion dollars, Amtrak could easily field a train that makes that run in 15 hours- remember, the Pennsy and NYC did it in 14- overnight. Leaving work that evening, you board a restored Broadway Limited at around 5:30. You eat dinner, perhaps work on some work via onboard wireless internet, and go to sleep, getting up at 6:30, showering, eating breakfast, and arriving in Chicago at 8:30, in enough time to get to your meeting. With this system, flying is unneeded. Think about it: the flight takes no less of your useful time. You sleep for 8-10 hours, it takes you about 2 hours to deal with meals. This train takes but 3-4 hours of your useful time.
I personally think we can take about half the business travellers out of the travel network entirely. They can use other methods of communication, other than face to face. I also think that with relatively higher-speed rail, we can take another 25% out of the system. By higher speed, I mean up to, say, 90% of what they ran 50 years ago. Vacationers can learn to, once again, enjoy the journey as much as the destination. We could wipe a good 50% of those out of the flight system, I think.
What will this do? First of all, using a train is more efficient, especially a really long train, than flying. This makes our travel more efficient. But secondly, it resolves the major problems with the airlines.
First of all, with a relatively cheaper to operate rail system offering fairs at, say, 20% more than currently operated, inexpensive travel needs are met. So the airlines can focus on offering decent service, reasonable schedules, and comfortable amenities at a price that actually reflects their costs plus a profit. Flying would become a luxury once again, at a price reflecting that.
Second, this will take a lot of flights out of the air, and reduce the need for the inefficient hub-and-spoke system. A flight schedule designed to cater to traffics realities can be offered. No longer will flights need to be scheduled at a frequent point-to-hub and frequent hub-to-point set up.
Lastly, the airports and jetways, with 60-70% of their traffic taken out of the air, will no longer be bursting at the seams. Airports can be better scheduled, flights better handled, take offs more orderly. Spare planes can be available in the event of mechanical failure. With the volume lower, most of the current problems in the industry simply go away.
Instead of ineptly concentrating our set up in planes and cars, we would have an overall system. Long distance Planes, luxury local express planes, High speed rail, slower overnight limited trains, local commuter and feeder trains, light-rail, subway, buses, and cars could, instead, become part of an overall system. The system’s purpose being to move as many people as needed as efficiently as possible.