In fairness, there would actually be much merit to this way of writing about an airline trip if the target audience were 19th-century people who had never heard

In fairness, there would actually be much merit to this way of writing about an airline trip if the target audience were 19th-century people who had never heard of an airplane except in fanciful speculation. It explains a great deal about air travel and adjacent parts of the setting, that a story written for a 21st-century audience who are already familiar with the setting, naturally skips over.