> 1. Passengers can spend time in VR (I want to believe that fairly visually immersive VR tech will be available already in “several years”).
It's available today. If you lost interest in consumer VR a few years ago, as I did, it's now worth taking a second look. The Valve Index and Oculus (i.e. Facebook) Quest are incredible devices with a mature software ecosystem. Half-Life: Alyx blew me away [0]. Compared to the headsets of a few years prior, I don't even notice a screen-door effect [1] on my Quest 2.
I've used VR headsets to keep sane in the middle seat on trans-continental flights. Even when it's just Netflix or YouTube in a virtual cinema, modern VR is an utterly transporting experience.