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autoexec

Seat width and leg room have decreased to pack in as many people as possible.

They don't offer peanuts because the increasing numbers of people developing peanut allergies have made it too deadly.

Passengers used to dress up for air travel, but now they dress for comfort.

Alcohol used to be served for free.

Passenger violence has increased.

They started making people pay for bringing luggage in the 2000s, first with checked bag fees and then carry on bag fees.

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The last few times I’ve flown, they offered peanuts as snacks.

That's impressive (or disturbing). I wonder if they've come up with some kind of peanut that doesn't trigger peanut allergies. I miss the airline peanuts and I was always a little sad that so many cultural references and stand up routines were dated by their absence

When they are offered there's usually an alternative snack offered. Most common seems to be pretzels and or a cookie of some sort. I had a non deadly peanut allergy growing up that I outgrew so never really acquired a taste for peanuts, I'm always grateful for the alternatives.

I think that their temporary absence was a bit of overreaction to peanut allergies (which continues in a lot of environments like schools still). Individuals who would have a reaction simply by being in the same general space as peanuts are rare if not nonexistent. Probably, for K-8, it does make sense in that kids can’t be relied upon to not do dumb things like give their nut-based snack to an allergic kid, but an airplane is a controlled enough environment that it’s unlikely to be an issue. The one key thing would be avoiding hidden nuts, e.g., here have this slice of banana bread—surprise it has nuts mixed into the dough!

> Alcohol used to be served for free.

No international flight has charged me for alcohol. Now, I've had national flights even try to charge me for snacks.

Drinks used to be free on domestic flights, too. And in addition to snacks, there were hot meals (also included in the price of the ticket).

One cool thing about coach back in the day were the center seats that folded forward to use as a table for drinks or cards. Planes flew at such lower passenger loads that this made sense. Imagine the likelihood of anyone being able to take advantage of this weird feature today!

The low cost airlines do, even long-haul international. I know it was definitely for-fee on Condor when I flew them from Germany-West Coast USA a few weeks ago (~10h flight).

I remember flying during regulation and I wish we’d go back to those days. Flying back then was so much better.

It was also a lot more expensive back then. Today you can pay first class and get better service. Ultimately this is what happens when air travel gets democratized: people focus on low costs.

Alternately, they add or increase costs for features that were once free/affordable until most people are priced out of them.

Between those two forces (airlines cutting services in order to make flying available to more people, and airlines turning once standard features into high priced "premium" features to line their pockets at the expense of most travelers) the effect is pretty much the same: Most people who want to fly have no option, but to find the most affordable rates where they can expect to get substandard service while only a small number of very wealthy people get what used to be granted to everyone with a ticket.

Air travel was once a luxury experience at a luxury price, and things had to change to open it to more people, but things like standing seats (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat...) and fees for carry on bags are certainly not necessary and are just airlines abusing passengers for profit.

The problem is that for the economy passenger, low fares really seem to be the end-all in terms of purchasing decisions. Legacy carriers were forced to resort to the same tactics low cost carriers did for checked baggage, because their passengers were leaving in droves, never mind that after fees prices were pretty much the same.

The “decent medium” market segment is actually fairly small. Hence why there aren’t really 100% premium economy cabins, they wouldn’t fill.

Adding on to your well stated points. Today we have to pay for Pre Check in order to have an experience that is still worse than the status quo ante. We are paying for a less bad experience.

It was also enormously expensive.

Yes and it’d be good from an environmental point of view if it had remained so. Even discounting the environmental aspect I still wish for the days of regulation. The cheaper air fares with the accompanying horrible experience is not worth it in my opinion.

Easy enough to fly first class. You get the leg room, and perks, and pay the money.

I prefer coach during regulation to first class now.

Are you referring to the "first-class" cabin on the vast majority of domestic flights? OK, maybe.

Bin space used to be plentiful in the back, so I'll give you that. And maybe you're checking bags. But here are some things you're missing out on in coach in 1980 that you get up front today:

- You're first-on.

- Drinks before takeoff (it doesn't have to be the champagne that comes by on the tray, you can ask for anything).

- Followed by a real service: drinks, appetizers, entree, dessert.

- Pillows and blankets that are actually comfortable. More than you'll know what to do with.

- Amenity kit, robe, slippers.

- A smoke-free environment.

- The brass ring, a 100% lie-flat bed surrounded by a privacy partition.

- You're first-off.

This is all just my preference and opinion. Smoking likely would have been banned eventually under regulation. I think the smoking issue is orthogonal to the discussion. Your other points stand and I was thinking only about domestic flights when I made my comment.

In many ways, I agree. There were far fewer people in the terminal and on any given flight. The service was better, too. Up front on TWA they carved the Chateaubriand at your seat. But simply eliminating smoking tips the scales in favor of flying today, for me (back then, they included mini-packs of smokes with the meal trays- gross). Also the current lie-flat seats/pods are awesome, even if you share the cabin with twice as many passengers.

Passenger violence probably went down before it went back up. Hijacking used to be almost routine.

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