Commercial passenger planes can generally only lift off and on at dedicated facilities, though.

So both can coexist? what's the issue? Why does HN waste energy on pointless pissing contests?

Yep, both can coexist perfectly well, in fact rail + flight + water + cycling should be good enough to account for the vast majority of mobility requirements.

Those facilities can be much more modest and can scale up and down depending on location. Particularly for smaller short haul aircraft.

Maybe. But they can almost never be in places where people actually need to be; like central cities.

But possibly closer to where a lot of people live (towns and suburbs) and able to be more flexible to where they might want to go. Such as having direct flights to a coastal holiday destination rather than needing to connect through a city centre.