Arriving at an airport - even last week in Moscow where's there's convoluted immigration, security, and I was checking a bag, more than an hour before take off seems crazy. An extra hour a flight adds up to days of wasted time hanging round at airports.
Even an inner german (or inner Schengen for that matter) flight has a lot more unknowns than a train:
1. public transport times are often a lot longer to airports. So you usually have to factor in more buffer. 2. what‘s the waiting time at luggage drop? 3. what‘s the wait at security? 4. how long do I need to go through security (I travel with lots of electronics which I usually have to take out)
If any of these things don‘t go as I expected my stress level increases because my calculated time buffer goes down. That‘s why I factor in an insane amout of time before boarding and usually end up hanging out at airports for hours.
For trains: The only unknown is the time that it takes me to get to the station. Every other time is practically zero.
And as someone else pointed out in this thread: the cost (in terms of money and time) for missing a train is a lot smaller.
This isn't true, or at least that's not true in a general sense. IIRC ticket prices of all high-speed services offered by Spain's high-speed train operator, Renfe, increase as we get close to the travel day. In some cases, I assume due to low demand, sometimes prices drop a couple of weeks to the travel day. I assume all prices follow a predetermined progression accompanied by ad-hoc adjustments depending on demand levels.
Source: I've scraped price data out of Renfe's site for fun.
> there is just a certain amount of lower fares (going up in stages, the closer you get to the travel date...
That's true for saving fares (Sparangebote). The train price for Flexpreis (an offer without a binding to a certain train) does not change that often.
1) The trains go every 30 minutes to Munich, so I don't have to wait that long.
2) The price structure of trains vs planes. The standard DB train ticket is flexible, i.e. you can use any train at the given date. Booking a flight on the same day is very expensive (and might be impossible if all seats are taken). There are discount tickets that are not flexible, but the price of the flexible ticket doesn't increase to enormous sums just because I book it on the same day - it's always the same.
With a train it basically never takes more than 10 minutes from arrival to walk to your platform, so you don't need to waste so much time just in case there is a delay. Also if you miss it you might be able to get the next train for free depending on your ticket.
With trains I just factor how long takes for the subway right across the street to take me 8 stations to the center.
[0] for all the reasons cameldrv mentioned, plus the impact on the environment. It may be noted that high-speed trains are worse on the environment than classic ones, although still in a different league from air travel.
I fly frequently but I'm also unable to predict how much time I need. It varies greatly. Security/check-in can take anything between a few minutes and 30+ min each. Usually, late passengers can cut the line, but I wouldn't take the risk.
I regularly take flights that only fly directly from Luton or Stansted, both of which take around 1 1/2 hours of travel time from our office in Central London. But that involves multiple connections, each of which could be missed or held up.
There is no need. You just turn up at the platform before departure time and get on.