By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Travel Blogger
As I sat squished in my tight seat with little width and legroom, I looked out the window not at the present landscape below me but into the past.
I envisioned what the experience would be like if this were the 1960s or 70s, known as the Golden Age of airline travel, instead of today. I daydreamed of enough space to spread out a bit, of being in the upstairs lounge of a 747 mingling with other passengers while a beautiful stewardess served us cocktails and even of being part of a hippie caravan flying to Europe for a summer of backpack traveling, breaking out guitars and bottles of Thunderbird wine to pass the time on the long ride.
Reading departure signs in big airports have always fueled a sense of adventure in me and as I travel today through packed terminals, long TSA lines, crowded gates and the ridiculous American boarding process, I can’t help but reflect on airline travel may have been like in the past.
This was a time when, hard as it is to believe now, that traveling on an airplane was a luxury. Most people went by car or even train. In these “glamour years” of air travel men passengers dressed in suits and women in dresses with high heels. Flight attendants were called stewardesses and worse smartly-designed uniforms that sometimes made the covers of fashion magazines.
The stewardesses were almost all young, between the ages of 22 and 28 in many cases, and fit. They were lookers, too. Coffee, tea or me was a poplar phrase others had about stewardesses at the time.
But was the Golden Age of airline travel really that glamourous and adventurous? Were the coach seats bigger? Was each flight booked to the max? Was there enough overhead bin space for all of us? Were passengers so focused on their own needs they ignored other travelers?
It’s hard for me to say because I was not there during that time but I can say for sure that no matter how much one enjoys traveling, parts of it eventually becomes a drag.
They allowed smoking on planes back then and as a non-smoker, I would not have enjoyed that part of it. But they had free drinks! I would not have wanted to put on a jacket and tie just to fly – I’m more of a shorts and flip flops guy – but they had free drinks! There were movies but no seat-back in-flight entertainment and I could not listen to music on a laptop or cellphone. I would certainly trade free drinks for those ammenities today. Meals were exceptional – prime rib and such – and served on plates with silverwear.
Planes were not crowded, in large part because it was expensive to fly. A coach ticket in the early 70s from New York to London was about $550, or about $3,500 adjusted to today. Airfares dropped dramatically after the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 but frankly, I just paid $950 to fly from San Diego to Knoxville, TN, for Christmas. So the price of flights today isn’t that much cheaper in some cases than in the Golden Age.
When you set foot on a plane these days, the only thing included is your seat, a non-alcoholic beverage, a tiny pack of pretzles or something and maybe some earphones. You are charged to check a bag ($35 each way is the standard), to board in an earlier group, for an “economy plus” seat which has a tad extra room from coach and even for window or asile seats in some parts of the plane.
You inch along the narrow aisle to get to your seat, stuck behing people cramming too-big bags into the overhead compartment, there’s rarely an empty seat next to you and security can take as litttle as 10 minutes or as much as an hour so you never know when it’s a good time to arrive at the airport.
Speaking of airports, many are now shopping malls with long walks to get to departure gates.
So heck yeah, I sure did miss out on a lot by missing out on the Golden Age of airline travel. It would be nice to see things come around to a little bit of that in this modern age of air travel.
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