Wow, I find it hard to believe someone would take a 3.5 hour train journey or 4 hour drive to avoid Edinburgh airport.
Why is it so hard to believe?
As you say, central London to central Edinburgh is advertised as a total travel time by train of 3:30.
The flight from (for example) Heathrow to Edinburgh airport is advertised by BA as 1:25. But don’t forget to add in your travel time between both airports and their city centres. A comfortable check in time, plus time to move through ‘security’ and the shopping centres laughingly called Terminals. Plus boarding and baggage reclaim should you have had to put any items in the hold. Then add in delays for stand allocation.
For city centre to city centre, I doubt there’s a cigarette paper between the two total travel times.
Add in the associated additional transport costs of travelling to and from airports, and actually
flying between some city pairs starts to look pretty non-sensical to me?
What’s the attraction?