RK Henry writes:

Which parts? Why not?

Beach, mountains, movies, museum, etc. Most of these places don't
have a runway out in front, so they require a car rather than a plane.

General aviation can be used very effectively for both business and
leisure transportation. Unless one lives in a place with almost
perpetually bad weather, VFR weather prevails so much of the time that
the airplane can be a very effective transportation tool. The ability
to go IFR, which is commonplace for many GA pilots and for the GA
fleet, adds a bit more to utility, making an airplane usable under an
even wider range of conditions.

I've consistently heard that if you plan to take trips on a schedule
and with any significant length, you'll need to plan on flying IFR,
which not everyone can do. There are few areas where the weather is
consistently clear and perfect over long distances. Deserts are one
such type of place, but they have disadvantages of their own
(desolation and extreme heat, for example).

Plus you need to be able to handle potential icing issues, just in
case.

If you don't have an IFR rating and the ability to deal with icing,
plus (preferably) an ability to fly at fairly high altitudes over
weather, your prospects for real travel on a schedule are limited.
You cannot say, for example, "let's fly to Portland on Saturday,"
because you don't know if weather will permit it, and your guest
passenger may not be too happy if you cancel things due to weather at
the last minute.

Better equipped aircraft can extend
that capability further, but those capabilities only extend the
percentage of flyable conditions by just a few more basis points. Many
kinds of weather conditions are transient, and waits of only a few
minutes to a few hours may be sufficient to bring weather good enough
to make the flight.

The same time periods might abruptly put you back into bad weather.
And if the flight lasts three hours and covers a substantial distance,
a lot can happen.

Lately, every time I try to fly around KSEA (in a sim--but the sim
picks up real-world weather in real time), it's IFR. Yesterday it was
so bad that I couldn't see the runway even from 100 feet away; that
flight ended tragically.

While airlines are very well equipped with the latest technology,
there are some kinds of weather that even they won't attempt. There's
really no such thing as an "All-Weather" aircraft.

Certainly, but airliners are so well equipped that there are few
situations that truly ground them or require diversions. Sometimes
they get overconfident.

It's sometimes amusing to observe those weather conditions that you
can fly in a GA airplane when ground transportation is difficult or
impossible.

Point taken. Certainly there is no way to drive a car with zero
visibility. And aircraft are not bothered by snow on the ground. I'm
not sure how rain affects GA aircraft (?). I don't know much about
the risks of extreme heat or cold in GA, either (?).

It's also interesting to note that there are weather
conditions that can be legally (if not wisely) flown in a GA aircraft
when the airlines are grounded (in the U.S.).

Hmm ... which ones?

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