It’s always interesting, as you said, to listen to pilots who pine for more speed. When you ask them what their normal flight mission is, most say that they usually fly about 2-3 hour legs – mostly due to the need for comfort breaks, or that their destinations usually fall within that range. Unless you are talking at least a 35-40 knot speed differential, the arrival times aren’t that much different. People don’t do 500+ nm trips that often. You also touched on the issue of wind direction. A turbocharged engine will get you up above the bumpy air, but the winds up there can be disproportionately higher. If it is a tail wind, wonderful, but a headwind can eat up most of that speed advantage.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/reader-mail/top-letters-and-comments-june-18-2021