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When Flying Was a Thrill
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Bob Greene writes that flying, with jammed-to-the-groaning-point cabins and torture-rack legroom; fees for everything from checking your bags to being handed a paltry package of food; and the endless, we'll-X-ray-you-to-within-an-inch-of-your-dignity security lines, is too often such a dreary, joy-sapping slog that it's difficult to remember that it was ever any other way. But back in the 1930s, '40s and '50s — even the 60s, flying was a big deal. When a family went on vacation by air, it was a major life event. 'Traveling by air in those years wasn't like boarding a flying bus, the way it is today,' says Christopher Lynch, author of "When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport," a celebration of the golden years of commercial air travel in the United States. 'People didn't travel in flip-flops. I mean, no offense, Mister, but I don't want to see your toes.' The trains were still king in those years and the airlines wanted to convince people that flying was safe. 'People were afraid to fly,' Lynch says. 'And it was expensive. The airlines had to make people think it was something they should try.' That's where Mike Rotunno came in, photographer-for-hire at Midway Airport in Chicago where cross-country flights in those years had to stop to refuel. His pictures of Hollywood stars as they got off the planes made air travel seem to be glamorous, sophisticated, civilized, and thrilling. 'Think of his photos the next time you're shoehorned into a seat next to a fellow who's dripping the sloppy innards of his carry-on submarine sandwich onto your sleeve,' writes Greene. 'Air travel was once a treasured experience, exciting, exotic, something never to be forgotten. You, too, could travel like Elizabeth Taylor.'"
Just buy a ticket for business class.
Sure, rich people looked rich back in the good old days. Same thing with the ocean liners in 1st class: very upper-class, luxurious, glamorous. But most people who traveled on ocean liners didn't travel in 1st class, so it was hardly the norm. The difference with early planes was that there was basically only a 1st class, due to a lack of room to include a 2nd class or steerage section.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I want safe, quick transportation from point A to point B at a reasonable price. Modern air travel mostly delivers this. It didn't use to.
Air travel was of dubious safety and blinding expense in the '30s, '40s, '50s - and wasn't particularly comfortable either. I don't wish to return to that era, one bit.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
We would look forward for weeks to a flight, and wear our best clothes. There was no security hassle, and you waited in the departure area for your flight to be called, then walked outside to the gate in the chain-link fence that led to the planes. Somebody pointed out which one was yours, and you went up the stairs and got in. The rest of your friends and family who were there to see you off stayed behind the fence, and waved at you, and watched the door close, the engines start, and your plane taxi away. If it was a reasonably small airport your friends could wait and try to identify your plane as it took off.
Ah, those were the days. (Sniffle.)
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Absolutely right. I found out a friend was very sick just a few weeks ago - I bought my ticket on-line for the next day, checked in on-line immediately after and was on a different continent the following evening. I am not wealthy (by developed world standards) and it'll stretch my budget a bit but it was completely doable. I made it home before my friend died and was able to see her and the family.
I found out she was ill via a call on our Vonage phone - no additional cost to my friend calling me.
I have no desire to go back to an earlier time when I probably would not have found out until after she had died and not been able to afford going back - and even if I could it would have taken a lot longer than a day.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ok, enough nostalgia. I'm now at the stage where speed is secondary to comfort. I want my zeppelins back!
By these standards Jobs and Gates are both slobs.
Yes, yes they are.
Is it really too much to ask that people dress in a way that makes it possible to estimate their financial standing without direct contact?
If you judge me by my appearance, I will judge you for being judgmental.
Yes, but you will be judging me from outside the opera.
You too, could travel like Elizabeth Taylor.
If you had Elizabeth Taylor's money. Today, if you have Elizabeth Taylor's money, you charter a jet.
Otherwise we'd all still be staring at a wheel or a flint axe and going "Woooow!" So its rather unfair to blame people for complaining about flying conditions when its a normal part of life no matter how amazing flying is technically.
When it costs the same as bus fare, the experience is much like, well, a bus.
The fact was that air travel used to be extraordinarily expensive. IIRC a Washington-Cleveland ticket was around $100 in the new, cheap "coach" class...which is like $900 today.
Now I can get that flight for $100 2012 dollars.
I guess my comment to the writer is that if he wants to travel comfortably, then he needs to pay for first class flights which have surprisingly not changed much over time (aside from inflation). Of course, most people think those are stupid expensive.
-Styopa
I'll settle for days not so far in the past. I used to fly out of Dallas Love Field, which is a fairly small airport. Park you car, walk to the check-in counter, walk to the gate, get on the plane. Somewhere in there you walked through a metal detector. Total elapsed time: 30 minutes.
Now, in the US with TSA security theater, you have to allow 90 minutes. An entire extra hour, times 600,000,000 flights per year: TSA costs the equivalent of more than 1000 lifetimes of time each and every year. Add to that the monetary and social costs of paying an army of morons to humiliate everyone, and you can only shake your head in disgust...
I want to go back to simple security measures, run by the airlines, who presumably have some interest in (a) efficiency and (b) customer service.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
That bit was the build up to the punchline sort of pointing out how the cutting edge always becomes normal. We just put a nuclear power car on Mars and 100 years ago we could hear air and hope for not death. A chair in the sky is amazing and the phone in your pocket makes Kirk's look like a pile of crap.
Adult should take stock and go WOW! Only children can say all your old stuff is shit.
Exactly. The only people who flew in the 1930s to the 1960s were the rich. Why are we surprised that they flew in luxury?
The fact the the middle class can fly today only means that the price to fly has dropped dramatically.
Of course, that is obvious... this article just complains that we still don't have flying cars, free energy and everlasting happiness. So far, every article that claims that the past was better has been full of logical fallacies. Usually they compare a romanticised past with a pessimistic view of the present. The past sucked for most people, but some are reluctant to admit it.
I have had lovely flights quite recently. Friendly stewardesses, nice view, decent seat with leg space (not too much, but enough), and a free drink + lunch + coffee. A minimal chech-in time (30 min before departure), only a metal detector as a security and very quick bagage handling. Also, public transportation to and from airports has vastly improved (in Europe, at least).
And all that for 100 euro for a 2 hrs flight (i.e. 1200 km), which I booked online in a matter of 10 minutes.
No way that was better in the 1960s.
How about we use this wonderful network of tubes to set up a method and system for organizing and grouping people who want to fly from point A to point B and combine their travel money to schedule/hire chartered flights?
A project for Kickstarter, maybe? Crowd-sourced?
I'm not sure precisely how it would work, but I see this system where you can use your phone or computer to post proposed charter flights and/or browse existing proposed charter flights by origin/destination/schedule/price looking for one that fits your travel plans that has openings.
Handle the airlines (and the TSA) like how the internet was originally designed to handle damage...route around them.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The human brain makes any of our technology look like amateur rubbish so do you spend your day looking in the mirror thinking how amazing you are? Unless you're a complete narcissist I suspect not but compared to it your smartphone and an aircraft are like childs lego bricks. So no , adults shouldn't take stock and go wow all the time - you deal with the world the way it is.
I think that AMTRAK is missing the boat here and there is a big opportunity for other companies to bring back traveling by train big time.
First, there is a constant drone of opinion and advice to slow life down.
Second, as mentioned in the summary, traveling by air is a giant PINA.
I think that if done right, rail travel could be cheaper than air travel and much more pleasant.
Done right =
1. Non-stop routes.
2. Good food at normal restaurant rates.
3. Technology accommodations (Wireless, chargers, etc.)
4. Of course sleeping accommodations.
I've looked at traveling by rail instead of air before but at the moment it is much more expensive to go the same distance and includes and unreasonable number of stops (they have it like a stupid commuter bus). I seem to remember that I could have driven and saved almost two days over AMTRAK.
Now, where can I get a few billion dollars for start up costs (not including the money to buy off politicians)?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's not it. The reason we are no longer impressed by it is not that merely that it has become normal. Even when the shuttle program eventually got scrubbed, you can't tell me that anyone in those record crowds watching the last few takeoffs thought of it as normal. Even the folks who live down there were always impressed.
The reason we are no longer impressed with most technology like airplanes and cell phones is that we have come to depend on it, and it has let us down. When airplanes were relatively rare, you didn't have people depending on them for most of their travel. People drove cars. An airplane was an exotic experience because you didn't have to depend on it to get you somewhere that you had to be. In much the same way, nobody cared about dropped calls in the early days because they weren't using them for the bulk of their communication. It was too expensive.
As soon as any piece of technology becomes a regular part of your life, however, anything that goes wrong becomes a road block for you. Now that people depend on air travel for much of their work and pleasure travel—now that people have grown to depend on being able to readily go long distances for work and vacation—the delays and other problems have more of an impact because they don't build in that extra day to accommodate things going wrong. Similarly, now that many people use cell phones as their primary means of communication, dropped calls are a frequent hassle that bothers people more.
If you want people to be impressed by something that they actually depend on, you have to do the right thing every time. It has to "just work". Every time. As soon as that consistency starts to falter, people quickly lose patience. And for good reason. A flight delay can cause them to miss the next flight, which puts them stranded in an unknown city halfway across the country from home. That didn't happen nearly as much in the early days of flying, back when on-time performance was less important than getting you there. If your flight was late, to the extent possible, they held the next leg. Now, on many airlines, they're forbidden to do so, and as a result, there's a lot more uncertainty about the ability of air travel to get you where you're going, so when things go wrong, people get edgy. In short, people can't count on the airlines to do the right thing every time. Ditto for the cell phone companies who frequently seem to be in a battle to see who can screw the customer hardest while making it as hard as possible to get justice when they do so (with mandatory binding arbitration clauses, for example).
And this, in a nutshell, is why technology ceases to thrill—not because it has become commonplace, but because what was once optional has become essential, and because the companies that provide the technology invariably take advantage of that fact to let them get away with poorer service, poorer quality, poorer longevity, etc.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.