People like you will never understand because you don't see the consequences of your actions, your not looking at the long term, you don't want too. You want everything now.
You really are trying to claim that putting players in time out (which, let's be honest, that is all airship travel was in FFXI) added challenges and rewards to a game? Did Outpost Warps ruin XI? Return Rings? Warp Scrolls? Oh, but first you had to run to the outposts to get them, you say. Yeah. A whole whopping hour of travel in game, and then 8 YEARS of instant travel. OOOoooooooo, challenges!

Look, I could agree with you if they were handing out xp scrolls, or having HQ armor/weapons dropping like skittles from the sky. I could even agree with you if they were allowing us to just throw gil at bosses to beat them instead of forcing us to use strategy in fighting and mp balance. And when they actually start handing stuff out without effort, I'll be there bitching too. But the simple fact is, forcing your players into time out doesn't add to the game, and skipping it isn't magically making the game easy. And hey, look at that! They are adding actual content to boat and airship rides, thus adding some purpose to them beyond admiring the vistas.

Seriously, I have never seen such a mountain made of anything in this game as what people are making of this.