[tici_88]

I completely agree, except I think trains have a much higher competitive range, possibly up to 1,000 km .

With a plane 1,000 km trip including all things you mention like arriving at the airport in advance, boarding, finding your way back to the city center, etc. would come easily to 4-5 hours when you calculate it door-to-door. This could be comparable to a train at 200-250 km/h.

Also, trains tend to be more punctual and less prone to delays compared to planes. And arriving in the city center as opposed to 40-50 kms out is a big advantage indeed.

[saiya-jin]

I agree here, some lines and trains in Europe go up to 300 kmh (last one I've tried was actually in Spain, on par with French TGV).

Plus airports have this pesky habit of losing all your luggage, even on fairly trivial flights. Recently my journey was Geneva -> Barcelona -> Seville, and they lost my big luggage with complete paraglider (4000+ euro) and other stuff (cca 1000 euro). For a week, they couldn't even locate it, had to buy tons of stuff and rent basic paraglider from school and I started saying goodbye to all equipment. No real compensation for anything. Then it just showed up in place I told them to deliver to, not even apology (vueling airlines, but I blame airports for this more than airline).

That's just one sample out of quite a few on how to ruin your dream vacation by flying.

[LtdJorge]

They can go even faster, but it's not as efficient.

[meerita]

I did 1000km in airplane (also i was private pilot) and it's a 1h trip. Barcelona -> Santiago is max 1h. I can spend another hour getting into the airport, the total trip will not go more than 3 hours, but in Train it will take me 8hs.

[jseban]

I think it's really difficult to average 200-250 km/h over 1,000 km with a train. I would guess the trains that average that speed would be much shorter trips.

[cyphar]

Various Shinkansen lines average that much or higher for long stretches. To be fair, there isn't a 1000km line in Japan, but ~500km at those speeds should indicate that it's possible. Sanyo runs at near maximum operating speed (300km/h) for most of its >500km run.

[meerita]

We don't have such train lines that do that much kms. We have fast lines, like max 600km. Longer lines have trains who are +180max. And each trip is like 7-8 hours.