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In my opinion, passenger airplanes are simply too slow to be practical in intercontinental travel.
The only way to travel is to board a container ship, checking where it’s headed ahead of time is for pussies.
The fact we are able to travel across the country without risk of death or worse is amazing in itself let alone we can go pretty much anywhere in the planet within a day. A freaking Day. Thats practically an act of god
Do you simply lack the perspective of what it was like traveling before airplanes? I am amazed that people can be shoved into aluminum boxes and go 500 miles in hour to get to practically anywhere on the planet within a days time?
The reason why it's so slow relative to the technology we have is because if they go faster they would break the sound barrier and planes overhead would be extremely annoying.
You are right. A little thing called Concorde used to be the queen of the skies, flying from Europe to the US in under 4 hours! But sadly she flies no more and interest in supersonic flight was lost after the success and downfall of Concorde.
Regular subsonic planes have also gotten slower for better fuel economy.
Cruising speeds nowadays range between 480 and 500 knots. In the 90s, the Boeing 707 regularly flew at 520-530 knots. It's all about fuel efficiency and profit.
So why don't we have more supersonic aircraft? While they are stupidly fast, they also make stupidly loud sonic booms and supersonic flight is banned over most inhabited areas.
And the technology is still expensive, meaning little, to no interest from airlines.
But technology marches on, so it is only logical that we see more supersonic aircraft, maybe powered by hybrid, intercooled hydrogen engines, maybe V-shaped... who knows.
Its a vast improvement over automobiles, trains, and old style prop planes...
Most of the main long distance passenger aircraft fly at between 80-85% the speed of sound.
Going faster burns an increasingly large amount of fuel - and is very costly. Supersonic aircraft also are very expensive due to their limited numbers (design and certification cost spread over limited numbers - not thousands of aircraft), and increased maintenance.
Several companies are working on supersonic passenger aircraft, although its estimated that the ticket cost per passenger will likely be about 4 times over the existing modern passenger jets (Boeing 787, Airbus A350, etc).
I follow an avaiatin forum (have for 15 yaers) so I'm fairly up to date on where the industry is at.
I think "Boom" is the most viable supersonic commercial transport aircraft under development.
https://boomsupersonic.com/