It allows people with half the available money to do what others could do before. That's more than twice as many people.
It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost. That's a lot of things that can move around the world 100X faster than they could on the next-fastest available mode: ships and trains.
It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost
That's leaving out fuel prices. The planes may use half the fuel, but aviation fuel has increased 7x in price since 1990. I couldn't find prices for 1969, but if you take the price of crude since then you're looking at a CPI-adjusted increase close to 100x.
Great point. Even more value to halving the fuel cost, then, but fewer products able to take advantage of it.
Of course, inflation should be canceled out before evaluating the overall benefit. If you can self the goods for 7X then the fuel savings is back to 2X.
It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost. That's a lot of things that can move around the world 100X faster than they could on the next-fastest available mode: ships and trains.