Assuming both you and your friend live in the actual, respective airport terminals.
Otherwise, your numbers just don't jibe with the reality of typical fight and check-in times (let alone the time cost of, you know, actually getting to and from the airport).
15 mins to the airport (I live close to a freeway entrance), 10 mins to the gate, 40 min wait time till takeoff, 90 mins in the air, 10 mins out to the curb, 15 mins to my friend's house near Hillcrest.
Sure, if I'm traveling at the height of rush hour, the car trips to and from the airport will be longer, but the solution is to... not do that.
Cross-country express trips could be done in less than a day.
Takes about a half hour from SF to SFO by car or BART. You need to get to the airport an hour before boarding. Boarding takes half an hour. That’s two hours. Flight time to SAN is about 1.5 hours. So now we’re at 3.5 hours, without counting commute time to your friend’s house.
And that’s pretty much optimal, in my experience. Maybe you can shave a half hour off, but unless you live next to the airport, you’ll miss as many flights as you catch if you try it regularly.
”Even when I fly cross-country...the flight back is just three hours after adjusting for time-zone change.”
Now you’re just making things up. Quick google tells me that’s a five-hour flight, not counting the lead time, taxi, etc.
Feel free to see my other reply in the thread. It takes me 15 mins to get to SFO by car (sure, if I lived in, say, the Marina, it would take longer; but I don't, so it doesn't), and I generally get to the airport 40 minutes before takeoff (arrive an hour before boarding? People do that? I don't even do that for an international flight), so in general I walk up to the gate just as boarding is starting. I usually time it so I'll arrive at the airport about 10 mins before boarding starts, which gives me plenty of time to get through the TSA Pre line (usually Terminal 3 for me, which tends to be pretty quick unless you pick your flights for peak times).
> Now you’re just making things up. Quick google tells me that’s a five-hour flight, not counting the lead time, taxi, etc.
I think you misunderstood. Yes, it's a 5-6 hour flight, as you say. If I leave DCA or IAD at 6am Eastern time, I arrive at SFO at 8-9am Pacific time, and have a full day ahead of me. Or I can have dinner at my sister's place, head to the airport, leave DCA/IAD on a 9pm flight, and be home a little after midnight, at which point I go to bed and have a normal day the next day. That's what I mean when I say "adjusting for the time-zone change".
And sure, there's more on either end for airport transit and boarding, but... so what? If I do the morning flight, I have an early morning, certainly -- I need to leave my sister's house by 4:30am -- but I can close my eyes for a bit on the plane, and it's not so bad when I land. Will I be a little more tired than usual come evening? Sure, but maybe I just go to bed a couple hours earlier.
The original assertion was "[you lose] a day when flying, even for short trips", which is just patently false.
I wouldn't at all agree with that. I live in SF and can get door-to-door to a friend's house in San Diego in 3 hours. I can do similar things for LA, Vegas, Portland, and Seattle if I like.
Even when I fly cross-country to visit family (near DC), yes, the flight out is a waste of a day (unless I take a red-eye and hope I can sleep), but the flight back is just 3 hours after adjusting for the time zone change. I can take an early flight out in the morning and still put in a full day of work, or have a full day visiting and fly back after dinner.
I really don't want to spend several days just on travel, were I to take a train. I would consider that a waste of valuable time that I could be spending at my destination. I might enjoy a long multi-day train ride as a vacation (once every few years, perhaps), but not when my plan is just to get from point A to point B.
I'll usually take the train from DC to NYC, or NYC to Boston, when I'm out east visiting friends, but I recently looked at doing DC to Boston direct, and was disappointed to see that I'd burn 7 hours on a train for only $20 less than a much shorter flight. And some of the trains were more expensive than the flight!