>>For my trips to NY, I'm taking a bus. Fron Norfolk (nearest airport) to NY it takes about 2,5 hours on a wing-flapper, plus the 1,5 hours before, plus the hour or more after, which is above five hours. If I take the bus, it takes me 20 minutes to get to the station, and another 20 to cross the part of Manhattan - the station is in Chinatown. And I don't get searched, get a cigarette break just minutes before departure, one halfway, and one as soon as we arrive. And you get to deal with a family business and not with a complicated system with lots of small print. Can't beat that.
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>We're basically comparing apples and oranges. I just wanted to point out that the measure of efficiency is not lb/hr, it's lb/mi (or kg/km). I agree that other factors have a huge effect on "travel time" efficiency.

My point exactly.

The airplane remains, without any doubt, the fastest way to travel from one airport to another. In real life, however, the airport is almost never my starting point, nor is it my destination.

So, back to the issue of airlines wanting to replace small prop planes with small jets - the increased speed doesn't justify the increased price (because of the fuel consumption, and the price of the plane itself), at least not for short flights. But then, they don't fly small planes long distance anyway.