Economics: Barrier to Faster Commercial Flight

Writing in Slate Magazine, Brian Palmer presents an extremely informative and correct argument for the fact that in spite of the development of flying capability, airlines are not getting passengers faster to their destinations. The argument is simply that fuel costs limit the speeds at which these airlines would operate since faster machines that are already available, would run on more fuel.As it is argued, a 10% gain in flight speed results in 21% increment in fuel consumption. What this means is that mass raising the speed of getting airlines to travel between cities is not a matter of technology but economics. In other words, it is possible to substantially shrink the time between cities such as London and New York but the time gained would not be worthy of the additional costs of fuel.

Meaning that planes will not cross continents much faster and will instead get more comfortable. How's that for a lesson on trade offs and opportunity costs?