Flying often enough to justify even installing the app/getting any benefits from it surely does count as luxury flying though?

Ideally an app is sufficient low friction that even a really minor quality of life improvement justifies it.

Not being an American I have no reason to even be a UA customer let alone install the app, and therefore I don’t know if they’ve achieved this or not.

Flying that much in anything less than first class is no where near luxury.

Flying anywhere, period, is a luxury

I don't know if you're trying to make a point about global living standards (irrelevant) or the non-necessity of air travel (true, but also irrelevant), but the fact is that budget airlines have existed for decades, and are often comparable in price to a bus trip.

Flying is far cheaper than Amtrak.

For a lot of trips, Amtrak is about the same as flying. Looking at a round trip from NYC to Chicago, on the arbitrary dates of March 26 to April 9, Amtrak costs $180 while Kayak shows the cheapest flights at $159. Of course, Amtrak takes much longer (20 hours) but is less hassle, and at that price the flight only lets you take one carry-on while Amtrak lets you bring two checked bags and two carry-ons. Adding checked bags will add $60 for the first and $80 for the second. Amtrak is also better for the environment if that matters to you, and the price difference is about the same as the cost of the carbon offset for the flight.

Overall, choosing Amtrak or flying is perfectly reasonable in different situations. Amtrak could definitely be improved a lot though!

NYC to Chicago probably has a decent customer base to support that price point. For amusement, try Miami/Seattle via Amtrak. It's possible, since I looked up the route [1]. One week transit time one way, at $2,000 (I don't recall if the price was round trip or just one way). And trying to work on the train was fun (too "swishy" to use the computer: http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.2). Totally not worth it for me. Sadly [2].

[1] For reference, I live near Miami (technically, I live in Boca Raton, but Miami is "close enough" at this scale). The company I work for is based in Seattle. I refuse to fly anymore for a variety of reasons.

[2] Riding in a private rail car really spoiled travel for me: http://boston.conman.org/2015/08/05.4 But way out of my pay grade.

I don't think I kept it, but a couple of years ago I made a video of a £1 coin (as thick as two US pennies) balanced in a shallow groove in the table on a long distance train in Denmark. It was about 30km before it fell over.

(But maintaining the track to this quality would be even more expensive if there was as much freight on it as tracks in the USA carry.)

That's somewhat a different definition than the comment I was replying to. There are plenty of people who may want to fly somewhere who aren't going to upgrade their phone to the latest and greatest every two years (which is what the comment above was implying: that since flying is supposedly a 'luxury' item it can be assumed that the customers have the latest and greatest phones).

Flying in NA, with covid, is a luxury. Europe is a different story.

Edit: why the downvotes? You can get flights for 50 bucks to go to different countries in Europe.

Maybe people don't believe it.

The cheapest flight I can see on SouthWest.com is $60, for a 1 hour journey from Atlanta to South Carolina.

The cheapest flight with Ryanair from Copenhagen is $9, though it doesn't include checked luggage. It's also an hour.

An even cheaper one is Kraków to Eindhoven, 2 hours, $6. There are fewer dates for this price though.

Southwest is not really the equivalent of Ryan. Spirit airlines has plenty of $22.22 flights (for two's-day, I guess), glancing at their page today. This includes e.g. Chicago to Tampa, Texas to NJ, and other flights longer than most European flights.

Thanks, I hadn't heard of Spirit.

They look very much in the style of Ryanair with the garish website. $22 for three hours (Boston-Miami) is priced between the two Ryanair flights, so I expect the "service" is similar.

I'm sure the average distance of a flight within Europe is lower than in the USA, since the USA is a bit empty in the middle and Europe has more water in the way, but routes like Scandinavia to the Mediterranean (Stockholm to Zagreb is 3½ hours and $14), or Britain to eastern Europe (London - Cluj, 3 hours $13) aren't far off, and the budget airlines also have flights to tourist destinations in Egypt, Israel, Jordan etc, which are as long as a US coast-to-coast flight.

I’ve been on a flight between Berlin and London that cost less than an Amtrak return ticket from Davis to Sacramento, and I’ve also been on a multi-day road trip from Davis to Salt Lake City that, while fun, was only a good financial choice due to four people squeezing into a Prius.

While I enjoyed camping and seeing bits of the US that foreigners like me don’t normally see, it’s not entirely clear that the difference between that and flying makes flying the luxury.

In general flying is more expensive in NA because of less competition and bigger distances. That's what I noticed when I moved from Europe to here. Now you have to take expensive tests to fly international both ways. That's why I consider it a luxury.

Downvotes because you seem to think there is something special about flying in Europe? lol. It is a similar size to the US within a reasonable estimation, let alone the whole of NA, which is probably what 3x as big?