Funny I should see this now. Someone over in the "blue pages" posted a topic earlier about air travel actually getting slower; a combination of aircraft speeds dropping below mach.85 and congestion. I submitted this response;
When you think about it, commercial air travel has not gone far since the 1950's and the release of the Caravelle, 707 and Convair 880. Except for the limited availability of the Concorde (which is now gone), passengers have seen no increase in speed. Entertainment options have improved over the past few years with the advent of PTV's, but this just distracts you from the fact that the food service is now terrible in most cases, and the seat pitch has been brought to a point where anyone over 6 feet tall is at risk of loosing their knees if the person in front of them reclines their chair. It is amazing in that for the first 55 years of aviation, we went from laying on the wing at 50mph to sitting in comfort at mach .9, and in the second 55 years we dropped back to siiting in a smaller chair with lousy food at mach.85. Not exactly progress.
The real issue is that air travel has become a commodity, available to everyone, and as such, subject to extreme competition and the price wars that accompany such a market space. It has also grown at a rate that most governments and regulatory agencies cannot keep up with in the areas of infrastructure support and overall governence. I don't know if there is any fix out there, but I tend to doubt it. These kind of conditions tend to plod on with little financial incentive to fix them.
I think the future will bring carriers and leasing options which will focus on the high end traveler who can afford to pay for speed and luxury. The rest of us "air breathing freight" will continue to be just that, with little hope for improvement.
Patrick