It may very well be that rail subsidy makes sense and air subsidy doesn't. I'm not arguing for or against it. The original question pertains to why air ticket i

It may very well be that rail subsidy makes sense and air subsidy doesn't. I'm not arguing for or against it. The original question pertains to why air ticket is cheaper than train. You and a number of posters here attributed that to subsidy, and I just wanted to point out that rail transport in Europe receives even larger subsidy than air transport. There are many factors affecting pricing, for example occupancy rate. Load factor of aircrafts are in the 80 percentage - [0], whereas it's often under 60% for long distance Deutsche Bahn's trains in Germany - [1] Another possibility is that train operators are often state owned and therefore face less competition and are less efficient than airliners, who are used to operate in a cutthroat environment. Note that I don't claim either of the above cause train's pricing disadvantage, merely they are factors to consider. OTOTH attributing pricing advantage to subsidy is a lazy take of a complex issue. [0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/658830/passenger-load-factor-of-commercial-airlines-worldwide https://www.statista.com/statistics/658830/passenger-load-fa... [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/654973/long-distance-trains-deutsche-bahn-capacity-utilisation-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/654973/long-distance-tra...