Bigger seats (more leg room) and better food costs weight. Weight is a much bigger problem for air travel than it is for train travel. It's just physics.
Actually, bigger seats reduce weight because it reduces the density of people (and luggage) that the plane carries.
It's a capacity issue. A plane can carry a fixed maximum amount of people, the same as a train. Finding the economic load for any transport solution is a function of what people are prepared to pay plus the fixed and variable costs for operation. So while weight is part of it, that's only as it pertains to the maximum lift of a plane. Weight isn't as important to a train, but a train still has limits to the amount of people and luggage it can carry.
Even ferries have different price/class levels, some using airplane seats, some allowing cabins. This is totally dependent on what the market pays over anything else.
I haven't sat down and done the math, but I'd imagine that if you compared the energy cost of counteracting lift induced drag, it would account for a larger portion of the operating cost of an airplane than the energy cost of counteracting rolling resistance does for a train. Assuming that is the case, it's less important for trains to minimize weight per passenger than it is for airplanes to do so, and space/comfort is directly related to weight per passenger.
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Bigger seats (more leg room) and better food costs weight. Weight is a much bigger problem for air travel than it is for train travel. It's just physics.
Actually, bigger seats reduce weight because it reduces the density of people (and luggage) that the plane carries.
It's a capacity issue. A plane can carry a fixed maximum amount of people, the same as a train. Finding the economic load for any transport solution is a function of what people are prepared to pay plus the fixed and variable costs for operation. So while weight is part of it, that's only as it pertains to the maximum lift of a plane. Weight isn't as important to a train, but a train still has limits to the amount of people and luggage it can carry.
Even ferries have different price/class levels, some using airplane seats, some allowing cabins. This is totally dependent on what the market pays over anything else.
I haven't sat down and done the math, but I'd imagine that if you compared the energy cost of counteracting lift induced drag, it would account for a larger portion of the operating cost of an airplane than the energy cost of counteracting rolling resistance does for a train. Assuming that is the case, it's less important for trains to minimize weight per passenger than it is for airplanes to do so, and space/comfort is directly related to weight per passenger.