▲ 68 points
back
70 comments
When comparing "flying then" to "flying now", you need to look at the real cost of the flights. Yes, the experience in economy class has got worse, but the cost of the ticket has also significantly dropped. In 2021 dollars, the cost of a round trip air fare has basically halved since 1979. You could buy a business class ticket now for a comparable price to economy back then.
https://www.airlines.org/dataset/annual-round-trip-fares-and...
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...
> You could buy a business class ticket now for a comparable price to economy back then.
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.
This is an article about US airline domestic flights, so none of that is in business class.
> round trip air fare has basically halved since 1979
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.
Or factor in the loss of purchasing power, along with the shrinkflation.
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.
The airlines.org figures includes a column with bags and fees. More or less halved in real terms since 1990.
You might have lost an inch or two of legroom. Then again, you might not because they made the seats skinnier...
That's the point, though - what you get has diminished, but the trade is that you pay substantially less. If you want more, you can still pay for premium economy or business. It's better to enable people with less money to fly, while still letting people get a better experience if they want to spend more.
Not to mention order of magnitude reduction of the amount of fresh air per passenger allowed to enter the cabin. Not to mention that the flight attendants used to be registered nurses; now they might not even know how to work the oxygen bottles.
This is a case where I wish society didn’t optimize for the lowest price and instead made it acceptable to pay more to make the default option more appealing. Yes, you can always pay for business class, but it’s framed as an upgrade, not the baseline standard.
Yes, but... today, if you don't need more than carry-on luggage and are ok with not getting anything to eat during the flight, you are able to afford flying, let's say, from Munich to Barcelona for a weekend, which you maybe wouldn't have been able to do when "paying more for a more appealing default option". Of course it's debatable if encouraging such flights is good for the environment, but purely from the perspective of having more travel options, I would say it's a win...
Some countries (like the UK) even have additional taxes on flights that are not the lowest class available. I'm not sure if it is to discourage taking more comfortable travel options or just to scalp people with money.
Except that means that people who fall below the baseline are just cut out. A large swath of the country in the 1950s simply couldn’t fly anywhere.
I am waiting for the day going to the toilet during flight and be faced with a contactless payment terminal to open the door.
After traveling through Europe and seeing the amount of "pay per use" bathrooms, I am torn.
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.
That would run into the FAA; there are a number of things that happen on flights that are mandated by the FAA, I suspect restrooms (and the drinks) are some of them for health reasons.
Ryanair did it >10 years ago, coin slot not contact payment terminal however.
> In 2021 dollars, the cost of a round trip air fare has basically halved since 1979. You could buy a business class ticket now for a comparable price to economy back then.
Business class is generally much more than double economy class right now.
Air Hollywood, which is a film set rental company, offers the Pan Am Experience.[1] For about $300, you get to sit in a 747 cabin on the ground and have the experience of a Pan Am dinner from the 1960s.
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...
That boarding process seems so great. Right now literally prefer a 12 hour drive to a one hour flight. The whole process is exhausting and stressful.
It's another reminder that terrorists have won, and have ruined the flight experience for everyone. You basically get searched in order to board. Nobody agrees to have even the slightest risk of a a plane to be hijacked in exchange of not having all of these security measures (which, in a significant part, are a security theater).
Exactly I live 600km from the capital. 1 hour flight. Still takes me more then half a day to get to my destination.
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.
It's probably better for our habitable ecosystem though so in a backwards way anything that makes plane travel less of a convenient no-brainer is good.
> prefer a 12 hour drive to a one hour flight
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.
I preferred the private Amtrak compartment. Overnight trip, bring your own snacks and beverage. Eat a meal or two with other people in the dining car. Read a book and be left alone in your room. Best part was being able to ride a bicycle right to the station and pack it my way. No luggage or boarding anxiety. Arrive and depart from the city or town center. After you pay the airline's extra luggage fees for a bicycle, the cost is comparable.
That's a bit of an exaggeration isn't it. Yes there's bag scan, and yes you need to buy in advance not to have exorbitant prices. Apart from that the experience seems the same.
And you shouldn't be taking 1h flights anywhere of course x)
> stewardess graduation pictures
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.
I remember flying PSA between Oakland and LAX in 1972. $16 each way and you could pay the flight attendant after boarding. The "meal" was a choice of "coffee, tea, punch or boullion".
It probably actually tastes good too. Iirc, taste buds don't work so well at altitude so all that fancy food prep was wasted on the passengers of yore. Might be worth revisiting on the 787s though since those are pressurized to 1km? Or something
These kind of articles are always dumb and never make an apples to apples comparison.
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.
Flying was for the rich until the 1970s.
The name "Airbus" describes it perfectly.
And yet the article says the reason is basically "capitalism bad":
> 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.
The Asian airlines I've used (JAL, ANA, Singapore, AirAsia) have been pretty damn good. It's hard to mess up curry and rice; you get salad, side dishes, bread, ice cream and alcohol. Many of the dishes are designed by famous chefs, even in economy.
I had a fine time on JAL, theyve come a long way since being responsible for one of the more infamous food/air incidents - the poop plane: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_food_poisoni...
Wow, thanks for that. So much to unpack here!
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.
Thai was great too.
And even the small regional Airline we had for the hop from USM to BKK catered something delicious. (Noodles with prawns)
Recently did London to Auckland (via SF) with United and selected 'Asian Vegetarian' as my meal. Best decision I've ever made travelling long haul: curry wins hands down over bad pasta or the grim 'chicken or fish' options.
The golden age they refer to is a very brief period of time in a now long history of flight. From almost every possible perspective, flying domestically within the US has more in common with taking a bus than with international aviation.
When it's an option, fly Lufthansa. At least in their transatlantic flights, the food was excellent even though I was in cramped economy class. As I recall I had a type of beef stew, potatoes and carrots, salad, bread rolls, butter, and a nice ice cream for dessert.
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.
It of course also most likely depends on what kind of food do you like. Imho, Lufthansa food is better than UA or some other equivalent US airliners, but lags significantly behind Qatar airways, Emirates, Thai or even Turkish Airlines.
"I member" as Southpark would put it.
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.
Packaging it is fine. Having a clown at security steal my cheese because it is deemed a liquid and therefor a bomb is where the difficulty lies.
back in the day i saw an airline ad about how their chefs specially plans each meal and the flavors etc and how much research goes into it (like adding more salt because our taste-buds are less sensitive at high altitude).
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.
It looks nice, but personally, I'm ok with the change. I'd rather pay (much) less and not get the fancy food on a flight I'm probably going to sleep through anyway. And, as the article says, the current first class experience still offers an upgrade.
NY to LA is ~ 5 hours, which is about as long as you get on the continental USA. Do you really need to eat? Chicago to NY is just over 2 hours - not really enough time for a 3 course meal.
If you are doing the 19 hours from NY to Singapore ... the food is pretty good!
People who have planned the trip might no need to eat on the plane, but business clients who might have a tight schedule or hopped onto the flight last minute certainly need the onboard dining
I can live without food and flight entertainment if they fly me Europe to US for 400 euro or Europe to Japan for 600.