Personally, I think the best way to implement such a feature is not the FFXI way of doing things, in that it's too realistic with it's far-apart scheduling and slow-boat-to-Doma speed whether you want it or not. FFXII had a much better system where when you paid for your ticket you were given the choice of either 'private cabin', which was an instant travel to your destination, or 'pleasure cruise', which was the 'slow', real-time travel where you could explore the ship and speak to npcs.

Making airship travel in such a manner would allow players that want to use it a social hub can do so, while also satisfying the requirements of those who just want to get where they're going right away without fuss.

And although as someone mentioned earlier that before they could even implement real time airship travel, a specific 'flying' zone would have to be created first for the airship to fly through, it's likely SE is already planning this, given the fact Yoshi hinted recently that the keyword for the game's future is 'flight' and how players will be able to build their own airships.

So I guess it's 'keep watching the skies'.