Yes, but fuel isn't most of that. And if it weren't for taxes fuel
there would cost what fuel here does. OTOH they have effective
passenger rail transport, we don't.


Less of the here and there, I'm in the UK!

No, we don't have effective passenger rail transport

It takes 5 hours to travel from London to Edinburgh by train, at a cost of
around £80 ($160). Whereas, book early enough, and you can fly from London
Luton (about 30 miles out of London) to Edinburgh with low cost carrier
easyJet.com for around £20 ($40) in just under 50 minutes.

Not a journey I make regularly, but have done it once or twice - only got
the train last time because the plane was cancelled - still, had plenty of
time to sit around and think about it... Okay, I jest - the trains are
good - but only because the entire country is small enough to drive from one
end to the other in about 14 hours, and from one side to the other in about
6 - that makes train journeys sensible in a lot of scenarios where flights
and cars just are pointless.

Oh, and the Pilot magazines here have more adverts in for people to do their
PPL in the USA (and, increasingly, Spain and South Africa) than they do
adverts for UK PPL training - it's about half the cost in the USA, I reckon.

D.