Remembering the Golden Age of Airline Food
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
https://www.airlines.org/dataset/annual-round-trip-fares-and...
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...
And if you buy business class, you end up with a lie flat seat that will likely be better than the economy seat you could buy at the time. In addition, the aircrafts now are more comfortable with much less noise and higher cabin pressures. In addition, flying is much safer now than it was in the 1960s.
I don't think that number will hold up if you include square feet of personal space and lbs of luggage that might need extra fees.
I love when people adjust for inflation in these debates but don't factor in purchasing power of the dollar comparison.
The ticket price is more expensive now, than 1979.
Gallons of milk in my grocery store.
Lbs of potatoes of X species.
Feet of 2 by 4s to X spec.
sq inch of flat in Dallas.
Hours worked for a white collar clerk.
Etc. "Inflation adjusted" dollars are not quality adjusted really.
In the same way a economy class ticket is a worse experience than in the 90s, e.g. a chicken is a worse chicken too.
You might have lost an inch or two of legroom. Then again, you might not because they made the seats skinnier...
But my point was more that just as we have certain expectations for other things, it would be nice if we had the same for air travel – and not just resign ourselves to "the absolute lowest price possible" as the defining characteristic.
On one hand, there are many more public washrooms than in North America, and they are generally much cleaner. On the other hand, paying to basically be a human being feels wrong and I refused to use them.
I've used the toilet on a plane maybe 2 times in my life, and I've fly quite a bit, so this probably wouldn't impact me much at all.
There are the single purpose ones in the middle of nowhere or train stations, where payment is an attempt against vandalism.
Everywhere else they tend to be free, and contrary to being on a plane, one can search for an alternative.
Business class is generally much more than double economy class right now.
Even at the low end, air travel was impressive. PSA was a low-cost airline. SJC to LAX, every hour, for about $14, with a 59 minute flight time. The process was very simple. Drive up to terminal. Park. Walk up to cash register. Pay. The register receipt was the boarding pass. A 727 pulls up and lowers the rear stairs. People get off. After a few minutes, the person who ran the cash register leads everyone waiting out to the plane, and they climb the stairs. Stairs retract, and plane takes off. PSA stewardess graduation pictures from 1974.[2]
[1] https://airhollywood.com/events/pan-am-experience/
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20090121124408/http://www.jetpsa...
There are lots of public places/events that don't require any searches/background checks and where a bomb would yield a significant number of casualties and terror to blowing up a regional jet, yet we don't seem to be having explosions every other day.
Maybe the terrorist threat is overblown and is merely kept around as a convenient excuse for more surveillance/repression?
I ride my motorcycle most of the times 6 hours door to door. With pit stops on the way. Trains are slow here but I take the sleep train. Get on train 10pm go to sleep and arrive at 5am in the morning :)
I prefer these latter 2 over flying.
https://www.chronotrains.com/?zoom=4.4&lng=4.85&lat=49.23&st...
Planes are an exceptional target because they can be deviated to foreign countries or to dramatic impact sites and because are so isolated while in the air. Neither applies to trains.
A plane is a self-contained system and most people don't have access to surface-to-air missiles.
I dream (heh) of a proper pan-european sleeper train network.
I'm right there with you. I'd go as far as 14 hour drive before I start thinking I should fly instead.
It wasn't always like this, flying was bearable even as far back as 2002-2008 even counting the post-9/11 stuff. I think a most of it has to do with cost-cutting. The second they find an efficiency they cut staff and hire cheaper workers. The whole culture around airports, even expensive ones, has started to resemble bus stations.
And you shouldn't be taking 1h flights anywhere of course x)
While PSA operated within a single state, there were no training requirements for its flight attendants. They were recruited by a lucky fellow who walked up and down the beach on weekends making offers. The recruits could be working on actual flights as soon as the following Monday. The airline had a discount flight from LA to SF around midnight on Friday night that was a couple of dollars less than the standard fare you mention. And the passengers on that flight could fly assured that the flight attendants had a week's experience.
It talks about Pan Am in the 1950s.
In May 1952 Pan Am tickets for New York - London roundtrip in economy class were $486. And that was the minimum legal price. Presumably you could find yourself paying more depending on demand.
That's equivalent to $5,584 today.
Google Flights tells me I can get a first class ticket on that route for $4,700 today.
So you're paying almost $1,000 more than a modern first class ticket and wondering why the food is pretty okay.
> you had airline deregulation by a guy who was an acolyte of Ronald Reagan.
> The more horrible you make it to fly coach, the more business people will demand to fly business and first class. The airlines make a bucket of money off people traveling up front, which is why they make coach as oppressive as possible.
Yeah no, deregulation made it so the average person could travel by plane at all.
> Back when the industry was regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, or C.A.B., airlines were not allowed to lower prices to win customers. So they had to find other ways to compete.
> They would compete against each other by adding more flights on the route. Since you couldn’t cut the price, what you would do is say, “We have the most flights.” And that really mattered to business travelers who wanted to be able to, if their meeting ended early, to go to the airport and quickly catch a flight home. So they were competing on frequency, and in other ways in service quality, by offering piano lounges on 747s. And they were gradually driving down the share of seats that were filled by adding more and more flights. And they would eventually get back to the point that they weren’t earning a great rate of return on their investment. So they’d go back to the C.A.B. and they’d say, “We need higher fares.” And the C.A.B. would say, “Yeah, okay, we’ll give you higher fares.” Eventually, in the mid-1970s, people at the C.A.B. figured out that this was just an endless loop, where we were raising fares, and the planes were getting more and more empty, and this was very inefficient. That’s where we had gotten to — pretty empty planes with very high prices.
1) 200 people with diarrhea and vomiting. Can't imagine how the plane smelled.
2) JAL's catering manager committed suicide after hearing about this.
3) If the pilots had eaten the food the plane may not have even landed safely - at the time pilots did not eat different meals to the passengers, but this is now commonplace.
4) Ultimate cause was actually American - Alaskan cooks in Anchorage prepared the food, and one had infected blisters on his hand.
5) Could have been prevented if the food wasn't stored at room temperature for 6 and then 8 hours. Matches my experience with Japanese people who have no problem leaving cooked food out in supermarkets all day long, or leaving leftovers overnight at room temperature without chilling it, very different to the US or UK.
And even the small regional Airline we had for the hop from USM to BKK catered something delicious. (Noodles with prawns)
On domestic flights, I miss Southwest Airlines pre-9/11 snack packs. They had cheese, crackers, cookies, and fruit like apple sauce. Nice pick-me-up in the middle of a three hour flight.
But seriously, not really shedding tears here. It was nice as long as it lasted, but packing your own food isn't that big of deal, imo.
I now know it is BS because bringing takeaway on the plane I felt it taste the same if not better than any airline food I've had.
If you are doing the 19 hours from NY to Singapore ... the food is pretty good!