If you live in the United States, your domestic travel options are quite broad—everything from Hawaiian beaches to the Grand Canyon to Alaskan glaciers. If you lived in Germany, not as much. I would compare domestic U.S. travel to intra-E.U. travel. The latter requires a passport while the former does not.

So does having a lower passport circulation per capita mean that Americans travel less? Not necessarily. Domestic U.S. travel =/= domestic other countries travel.

Regarding airline quality, the market has repeatedly shown that it only cares about price. U.S. airlines provide an excellent product for the fares they charge, as do various other LCCs around the world. It's tough to compete with a state-owned airline on quality when you're concerned the most about lowering costs/fares.

I would argue that providing an excellent in-flight product is not significantly harder than running a five-star hotel. No such airlines exist in the U.S. not because we don't know how (we do, after all, make the airplanes and the seats) but because we just don't want it. SQ and CX would go bankrupt overnight if they became U.S. centric.

Regarding the whole A vs. B debate, let's not get the war started again. I will say, however, that Airbus has done a fantastic job catching up with Boeing. The future, however, looks brighter for Boeing—the investments they made in the 787 and 777 programs are really starting to pay off.