Market economy: Why air is cheaper than train?

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Accepted answer

Your question has more is place on stack exchange economy when it will exist. (And it starts with armchair physics.)

Still an interesting question.

I already asked myself this question, here are some thoughts:

Travel time is employee's time who need to be paid
The plane Berlin - Genova takes 1 h 45, the train 10 h.
During the flight, you are only taking 1 h 45 x the number of crew members.
During the train, you use 10 h x the number of crew members, maybe including night fees.

Infrastructure
Plus, for the train you need a big rail infrastructure that is expensive to build and to maintain.
For the plane you need air, which is still free. (Maybe you pay somewhere the persons who designed air routes.)

Junction fees
For the railway you need to pay train stations and junctions, for the plane you need to pay airport fees.

For the train if the way is inter-countries, you need to split the bill between two or more companies, for the plane it's only the air company.

Occupancy rate
The only international long distance train i took was almost empty, maybe if there were full there could be cheap tickets (and/or vice-versa).
All of the few planes i took were always pretty full.

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