If air travel could be more streamlined (aka, no need for things like security, check-in, like how a train would be), then trains are absolutely uncompetitive on speed.
The only advantage of a train would be that you could more easily sleep in one - so an overnight trip is less tiring, and you save on cost of an extra night of hotel stay.
I agree I'd like more peace but this stuff isn't making it slower.
And of course it's much better on CO2 emissions.
But trains need a lot of infrastructure and long delays are frequent.
This is quite common in Blighty; there is no need for another ticket (outside some time restricted fares where the ability to stop is limited). Indeed, it can be nice hopping off at a new city for a mooch around if you have time to do so.
(Only slightly off-topic; We have the phenomenon of 'split tickets', where it can be cheaper to buy two tickets from A --> B --> C rather than one ticket from A --> C even when the train stops at B anyway! You don't even need to get out of the train at B if you don't wish to do so. Our ticketing system is a mess.)
All saver tickets in German (which is what most people use), and most TGV tickets (even non saver) are bound to specific trains at specific times.
https://www.bahn.de/faq/was-bedeutet-zugbindung
The UK is the odd exception here. But it also doesn't have real high speed trains, except from the one that leaves the country, where hopping off is impossible (unless you want to end up in a dark tunnel under the sea and be arrested afterwards).
Flexible tickets are becoming unaffordable for certain journeys such as those on the ECML with LNER (aka The Government)
Notably, I say noise, and I suspect reasonable people will point out how not-quiet trains can be. I think the only argument I need to make for how much quieter they are than aircraft is pointing out on a map where the (commuter) train yards are (routinely city-center) vs airfields (typically the outskirts, far from where people live)
Aircraft require less infrastructure between points, but when you get there a rail yard doesn't require multi-kilometer runways (plural) and taxiways.
PS - My god, I hadn't realized how pro-train / anti-aircraft I was until I started on; even having previously worked in aviation, suggesting it was a damn good idea to leave. Aircraft may be an incredible feat of human engineering, but like the personal automobile, we as a society have taken it too far and used them in places that could do with fewer of them, IMO.
In London complaints about noise from stations was more common at some point than from the train itself. ("The train now approaching platform 2 is the midnight forty-five South West Trains service to London Waterloo calling at London Waterloo only. This train is formed of eight carriages. If you see anything suspicious, call the British Transport Police on 1984. See it, say it, suck on it.")
If we get rid of other considerations, and train travel could be more streamlined (strap a jet engine on a train, no need to gain altitude), then airplanes are absolutely uncompetitive on speed.
well, hyperloop tried and failed. It's just not practical.
I usually arrive 40 minutes before the train starts moving, including large luggage (30 minutes before is the limit at which the ticket gates close). There is no waiting for you luggage on arrival because you always have it in your hand.
This is also possible because the distance between check-in gates and the train is only around 50 meters in all 3 stops (London, Brussels, Paris). On those 50 meters you have the luggage scanners, passport control, and the waiting hall.
Compare that to kilometers of walking at Heathrow Airport.