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.'"

Comments

mostly because there wasn't room for 3rd class

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:You can still fly this way if you want to

[dintech]

Louis CK - Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they tell you their story. And it's like a horror story. They act like their flight was, like, a cattle car in the '40s in Germany. That's how bad they make it sound.

They're like, "It was the worst day of my life. First of all, we didn't board, for 20 minutes. And then we get on the plane and they made us sit there, on the runway, for 40 minutes. We had to sit there."

Oh really? What happened next?

Did you fly, through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, YOU NON-CONTRIBUTING ZERO?

You got to fly.

You're flying!

It's amazing!

Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, "Oh my God! Wow!"

You're flying.

You're sitting in a chair in the sky. . . .

Re:Slow-flying news day

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is powered by your submissions. What have you submitted lately? If you don't like what's being submitted, submit something better yourself or go into 'recent' on the right hand side and down vote the crap. Stop whining about something you have control over.

Re:I don't want thrills...

[ccguy]

I want safe, quick transportation from point A to point B at a reasonable price.667 Modern air travel mostly delivers this.

Only if your definition of quick only includes time elapsed between take off and landing. Definitely not that fast if you time door to door and include everything.

Also, why isn't a 'medium' class anymore? One would think that any company that provided decent legroom at a reasonable price would make a killing. Seriously, I don't want to pay business fares just so I can have a flight in which I'm not worried about the retard on the front row putting their seat all the way down (at the risk of breaking my knees), but I'd be happy to pay twice the coach fare if I could have the legroom from the seat in front on mine (ie half the rows at twice the price).

A flight from Madrid to New York costs 400 euros in coach, around 3000 in business. Damn, give me something decent for 800! I don't need champagne, I don't need slippers, I don't need a private selection of movies. I just need the legroom.

Re:Isnt it better now?

[stoolpigeon]

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.

Re:Toe bigot

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I'll settle for pre-TSA days

[bradley13]

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.

Re:Yes, except the cutting edge always becomes nor

[ciderbrew]

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.

Re:You can still fly this way if you want to

[dywolf]

I love flying. sure I hate it when some sweaty fat guy/gal didn't buy two tickets or get put next to an empty seat and is half in my lap. sitting on the tarmac in the heat, sucks too.

But its got its good points too.

Always get a window seat. I stare out the window. I watch the towns drift past. I name the cities and geographic features I see. If I spot something interesting one of the first things I do once i get to a computer is fire up google maps and figure out what I saw.
-Did you know the Mississippi river is down so low, the river thats a mile wide for a huge portion of its length, is down so low right now from teh drought, that flying over memphis and other portions of it, it looks like over half its width was dry as bone sandbars? Thats the drought were in right now....the mississippi, the river that drains ~80% of the entire countries watershed.
-approaching Pheonix on a lfight from 29 Palms to Dallas, about 30 minutes west of pheonix (at altitude and speed, so ~300 miles or so, near the border with cali) was a quarry/pit mine in the middle of the desert. One that was absolutely HUGE from 30000 feet up. Dont know what theyre mining, but from google, and flight, it appears to be over a mile deep, the central pit. And a few miles wide. The civil engineer side of me looks at that and thinks, wow, thats a feat. Thats awesome.
-I see hidden lakes and rivers and creeks near places Ive lived for years, that I never knew existed.
-On flights out of San Diego, LA, and San Fran, when they have to loop out over the ocean before turning back inland on takeoff, I've seen whales, scores of them, swiming along. Big ones (grey or fin?) and small (dolphins and orca). Often only a mile or so from shore.
-Flying into (and out of) turkminstan and afghanistan on my deployment, I swore I was flyinig across portions of nevada, the desert terrain is so similar. And again, there is no much hidden greenery around little water seeps, rivers and lakes. Bagram is in the middle of nowhere, thats why theres a base there. Just a few ridges over its like a huge valley oasis (relatively, for a desert), and naturally that's where the people, mostly farmers, are concentrated. They dont show you much of the rugged beauty and scenery of the place when they show the news. Everyone thinks its just sand and camels, but its familiar territory for anyone who's lived int eh southwest.
-Flying across the desert of new mexico, I seen white sands test range
-flying across so cal, i seen the muroc dry lake, with its giant rose compass, and the dry lake "runway" the shuttle landed on. as a aviation buff, that place is magic land anyway
-had a flight once fly over near the tonopah test range and airfield due to storm forced divert. didnt cross the airspace, but apaprently we got pertty close to their flight paths over there, cause in a couple successive flashes of lightning, i saw a flight of F117s crossing our line of flight, a few thousand feet below us.

There's magic out there still in flying.

AMTRAK

[sycodon]

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)?