In either case, it's an interesting exercise but missing some key calculations... When I transfer data from machine to machine, the data is immediately "usable

In either case, it's an interesting exercise but missing some key calculations... When I transfer data from machine to machine, the data is immediately "usable" on the receiving machine. When transferring data by physical means, the data needs to be brought to the final point of consumption, and possibly loaded into the host machine if it is not in some form that could be immediately connected/mounted. So, the real comparison would be transferring data from the host machine to some form of removable media, taking that media to the airplane (early enough to meet all the pre-clearance stuff), waiting for the plane to takeoff, fly, land and then handoff the physical media at the other end. In many cases, I'm sure the plane is still faster, but if we're talking about its theoretical bandwidth we need to look at the entire "trip" of the packets/data, not just one segment of it.