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I get that the environmental impacts are pretty significant. I looked it up and it seems like aviation is like ~3% of worldwide emissions and while that's not really the biggest number I've ever seen, it is pretty significant.
I just think it's equally unreasonable to condemn air travel in general when the alternatives are equally unreasonable. If somebody wants to go on a trip, what should they do? Months-long zero-emission backpacking journey? Never visit anywhere your whole life? Wait for your country to build high speed rail?
The 3% figure is going up, up, up exponentially with no end in sight. Because right now, most of the world's people have never set foot in a plane but they sure want to. And why shouldn't they? After all, we do (or do we?).
That figure is in fact misleading for the purposes of this debate, because for individuals flying has a huge impact on one's carbon footprint. That's not surprising when you think about it: it's similar to driving (alone in a smallish car) for the same distance, but who drives to NZ and back? The problem is distance and time. And most people in the world have never taken a plane. It's a completely unscalable as an activity.
About alternatives, the premise of this whole debate seems to be that the only good holidays are ones far, far away. That is very debatable.