It pulls the chicks at parties.
Only if you have a nice shiny modern comfy plane
A private flight can not really be considered 'practical or cost effective'
It certainly can be very practical if you travel to
your schedule. It isn't generally suitable for say meeting customers because once the meeting is booked, you have to be there. Also you usually cannot reveal that you flew yourself because they will rightly suss that they are paying for your hobby...
Cost effective... that depends on the value you put on your time.
Millions of people put virtually zero value on their time, and will make their way across the UK to Stansted where they waste half a day having their back orifice x-rayed, just to fly on a £30 ticket which (presumably) makes them feel good about the whole sorry process.
I might spend a couple of hours flight planning and faxing off PPR etc, 20 mins drive to the airport, 30 mins preflight etc, 5hrs later (a normally very enjoyable flight with great views) I have landed in Croatia and 20 mins later we are in the hotel. BUT the departure might be delayed a day or two due to weather.
Caveats:
- if I had to drive to the airport for say 2hrs I would probably give up flying
- to do this without some headaches, and legally, one needs an IR. I used to do these trips under VFR but would never do it again - it's awfully hard to always be in VMC but the worst bit is never quite knowing whether they will let you into some piece of airspace so a dogled needs to be done in double quick time. And I admit an IR is the hardest thing I have ever done.
Generally speaking any journey that would be up to 200 miles by car will always be quicker door to door by car, and of course much cheaper
That's usually true in the UK, due to poor airport coverage. But in the right situations, a 200nm flight is 1.2hrs and could easily be 8 hrs by car if the traffic is bad and it's in country lanes.