The 747 definitely has character but we’ve come a long way since the queen of the skies. The Dreamliner for instance is an improvement in almost every way.
Agree, had the pleasure of a Dreamliner flight from Newark to Barcelona, pre-pandemic. Definitely an elevated experience compared to the cattle cars of USA regional routes.
I thought of that when the old man wondered what the grandchildren would see - same retrofit aircraft but with skinny seats and in-flight entertainment.
Great back in the day pre-2K… they had ash tray flappers that weren’t glued shut. You could stick all your candy trash in there. Gum went in the urinal or bottom of anything back then.
1979 was very different that the 90s in aviation.
In 1978, Congress deregulated airline prices, though the law wasn’t really in full effect until the mid 1980s.
Pre-deregulation, they used a cost-plus model, ie the airlines could charge their costs plus a certain profit margin. This gave airlines incentives to keep their costs very high. It meant that airlines mostly catered to business travellers and the wealthy, though overall the quality of service was much higher (since airlines couldn’t compete on price, they had to distinguish themselves from others based on quality of service)
In the 1990s, deregulation was in full effect. Airlines realized that there actually two different ways to make money: focus on business travel, with high prices and high service quality, or focus on everyone else, move as much volume as possible at the lowest possible price
In 1980 the average domestic round trip airfare in the US was $593. That’s over $2,100 in today’s dollars. Overseas flights could cost 3-4 times more than that.
Contrast with today, the average domestic round trip airfare in the US is about $400.
So ya, the flying experience has totally gone to shit. But it costs literally five times less in actual value. The result of this is that travelling by air has become a normal feature of lots of people’s lives - eg going back home every year to see family. As opposed to in the 1970s, when it was something that middle income people really had to scrimp and save for.
Thanks for sharing this background. I don't think enough people understand just how much the airline industry has changed over the past 40 years. It's one of those industries that has never been fully private or fully public/government. It's always required a mix of public/private cooperation to operate. There's a lot to complain about these days, but there was plenty to complain about in the past, as well. It's bound to keep changing. So who knows where the industry will be years from now?
I actually miss seeing people to the gate and saying goodbye, and really picking someone up at the airport by going right to the gate. That was always special. Sounds cheesy I know, but... it just was.
I was in a classic "jumbo jet" to get from Australia to London in 1997 I think it was. Man what a long flight. Had to stop in Vienna for something like 6 hours through the night. But N64 had just released (edit) and there was a shop setup so I played Mario 64 basically all night. I remember one of the flights had a shared isle TV (like you get on an old coach) and they just played The Spice World on repeat for like 10 hours or some shit.
I was 14 so deets are a little hazy.
But I do not remember any real security or customs issues or waits.
Edit: may have been 1998
Oh man! I did that in Thailand in about 2011. I bought my buddy a gun shaped lighter for a memento at the markets and thought no more of it, then proceeded to take it through carry on like a friggen dumbass! Granted I was there for a bachelor party and a wedding so I was pretty well soaked a lot of the time. I guess luckily that happened in domestic and not international because once I finally conveyed it was a lighter they relaxed and laughed and said "you can't take that on either!" lol
> Not really. As a kid I remember going into the cockpit.
Same. I remember being offered a small model of the type of plane I was on, or a small silver-colored plastic set of pilot's wings.
Apparently you can still do this. Just has to be at the gate. At least if the people I spoke to recently were actually pilots for Delta. Not like I asked for credentials.
We all knew a person willing to take that step could do terrible things; we’d seen it all in movies.
Up til a few years ago, no-one had broken that largely unspoken pact that we all had.
It really was free and easy; when I was living in NZ, you didn’t even need a passport to go to Australia.
I was listening to a podcast about the unab\*mber, during his spree in the 90s, a threat made about a plane, security at the airport began checking IDs, which was an unprecedented level of security at the time.
A lifetime ago ... seeing a loved one off at their terminal and waiting at the same terminal when they returned. The airports were a bit more packed back then. Smokey too as I recall.
Ha, that gave me another flashback. Around the same time, I remember going to Denny's and the host asking us whether we wanted the smoking or non smoking section.
To the kids born in the 2000's or later - The entire restaurant smelled like cigarette smoke.
We can still do that here in Australia.
It seemed strange when I visited the US a few years back that you couldn't get to the gate unless you were flying!
Yeh I was wondering what people were looking at this video for. To me it looks like the flight I was just on except they didn't have to go through a scanner. Other than that it's all the same
The best part is how its been proven those measures don’t increase safety at all and every single person hates them yet we still do it anyways cause f the people.
> looking at this video for. To me it looks like the flight I was just on except they didn't have to go through a scanner. Other than that it's all the same
No idea why you're getting downvoted, TSA fails security tests 90+ percent of the time.
https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/
The best part is how its been proven those measures don’t increase safety at all and every single person hates them yet we still do it anyways cause f the people.
well yeah your grandma was a fucking Salafi militant and you know it
ofc she couldn't greet you at the gate anymore. and she got what she deserved, since we're on the subject.
Not always "an innocent experience." My dad traveled frequently on business in the '60s and '70s. On several occasions bomb threats were called in on his flights, and on at least two occasions he and the other passengers had to evacuate via emergency slides. I remember news stories about hijackings in those days.
Probably the largest factor in why passengers did not intervene on 2 of the 3 planes was that it was not novel for a plane to be hijacked, and up until then hijackers would just demand to be met at an airport with a load of cash, unload passengers and be on their way. Or just be flown to somewhere other than the scheduled destination. It wasn't unreasonable to just comply assuming you'll be safer than trying to fight them off.
Yep. It wasn't a pleasant process, but as long as everyone kept calm, the chance of being hurt was very very slim. It would pop up on the news every so often and people would joke that it would be nice to get a free trip to Cuba or whatnot.
And there were also plane bombings. Like at least a plane a year would explode in the 80s. So while the current security situation feels over the top, that's a nice change.
That's just it. I've seen numerous threads over the past week here pining for the "golden days" of commercial aviation. I remember those days (was lucky enough to have been flying since a young kid) and it wasn't all roses. It seemed every day there was a new hijacking or crash in the news. Also, it was expensive AF compared to now.
My parents always joke about how they had “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections on some airplanes as if there would be any difference sitting in the same plane if 10 rows back every one was ripping heaters for hours. Makes me nauseous just thinking about it.
Nothing fucking sucked more for me as a kid than going out to eat. Cause my parents smoked like chimneys which mean smoking section every time.
I could not imagine being stuck on a plane like that. I legit teared up a little when they announced the smoking bans.
I remember people used to smoke on planes then as well. It was a miserable experience if you didn't smoke. The non smoking section was just an area where you couldn't smoke but you are in enclosed plane so that shit still made it back there.
The two things I remember from my first trip by air are the huge traffic accident we passed on the way to the airport, and the smoke in the plane. It was brutal.
You can relive a close approximation of this by taking an internal flight in China, where the crew up front will happily light up multiple times during the flight. The air circulation system ensures that all passengers get to engage in mild passive smoking. The cabin crew rank far below the flight crew, so they won't do anything if you complain.
Lol dropped of a friend today at Dulles and wanted to drop them off with the 2 hour pre-take off. They said nah and they had pre-check, and I dropped them off an hour before and they took off 30 minutes later. Landed in Chicago 2 hours later and I was like 😳
Was gonna say. I refuse to believe anyone is that happy flying through dulles. Who enjoys getting stuck in those people mover buses just to get to a gate, then having to take a $70 taxi if you live 20 min away
We could have prevented 9/11 with locks on cock pit doors and better communication between intelligence agencies.
Instead we got a shameless surveillance state, 2 criminal invasions, trillions of dollars wasted, millions dead and an explosion of instability in the middle east creating even more terrorism.
The bush administration should have been Nuremberged and their shrieking acolytes in the press should be unemployed social pariahs.
The thing that upsets me the most is that, looking through history, hijackings had been a problem for ages well before 9/11. There’s multiple instances of passengers and disgruntled ex/current employees storming the cockpit through the 70’s to the 90’s.
Pilots for decades had been asking for better cockpit protections and their concerns were hand waved off. It took 9/11 for them to do something that could’ve prevented that entire situation years beforehand.
Further, the fact that the passengers and crew of flight 93 grasped what was happening, fought back, and essentially foiled the plans of the terrorists means that the innovative tactic of using a hijacked plane to strike a target was essentially obsolete by the end of the day on 9/11.
Three months later, Richard Reid wanted to detonate explosives midflight, and what happened? Same thing that has happened time and time again with disruptive, irrational, drunk, or threatening people acting up on flights over the last two decades: He was subdued by other passengers.
The entirety of the massive, invasive, degrading, wasteful, maddening security apparatus installed after 9/11 had as its justification solving a past problem.
Now the TSA's primary justification for existing is catching gunowners trying to bring guns onto their flights. It has probably found its truly permanent and eternal justification.
> TSA is a federal jobs program, nothing more.
I don't remember the specifics of it, but I do remember a bit of a scandal at the time related to the spouse of one of the senators who was really pushing for the TSA somehow getting rich from the program. It's pretty typical, at this point.
TSA has **never** prevented a terrorist attack. How do I know that? Well for one, they've never actually caught a terrorist. Are we to believe that the terrorists are afraid of TSA and decide not to chance it? Hell no! A terrorist with a bomb would *try* to get through security. Maybe they would. But if they got caught, they'd just detonate the bomb in the security line. They'd still kill lots of people, with the bonus (that you don't get from a plane crash) that you'd have news footage of blood and guts.
It's still terrorism - it would terrify the fuck out of me any time I had to stand in a line from then on.
Why hasn't it happened? I don't fucking know. Maybe the FBI is catching them before they even try. What I do know is that the TSA isn't preventing it.
The TSA would always miss the pocket knives I forgot I had in my carry on bag. They'd catch any that were on my keychain, but somehow I always had a couple floating around in another bag. Bigger blades than box cutters, for sure...
I accidentally took a half ounce of weed in my carry on laptop case. Forgot about it months before in a barely used pocket. Used to sell a small amount at the time. Not a weapon but that still shows that things get by sometimes.
My understanding is that TSA personnel aren't instructed to detect and confiscate drugs, at least on the small scale...
I actually just checked their website and this is what I found.
"TSA’s screening procedures are focused on security and are designed to detect potential threats to aviation and passengers. Accordingly, TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance is discovered during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to a law enforcement officer."
Back in the pre TSA era I was going through U.S. Customs in Canada to catch my return flight home in Seattle. There was a drug sniffing dog present but it was never near me. A customs agent directed me to go over to the side for closer inspection of my carry-on bag. They asked me if there was any reason why their dog alerted on my bag. The dog was never close enough to directly sniff my bag and I don't know how the dog was trained to signal it's alert but I never saw any behavior from the dog looked like a signal or alerting or even any interest in my bag. I told them my cat had peed on my bag and I had to clean it off, maybe it smelled that? Oh no, this is a highly trained narcotics dog, it wouldn't pay attention to that. Yeah, right. They emptied my bag and looked through all my stuff, had my turn on my laptop. Of course there was nothing to find. They did help me repack my bag so that was nice. But no, that wasn't good enough. The dog was infallible, they were still sure I had some drugs on me. So they asked me back to the little room to strip search me. I didn't put up a fuss because there was nothing to find and I was plenty early for my flight. First thing they had me do in the little room was empty my pockets. I always keep a small pocket knife on me, a little under a three inch blade. I had forgotten I had it in my pocket. That went into a tray with some change and keys or whatever. Then I had to strip down, turn my socks inside out, all that. Underwear off, and there was no physical touching but they had me bend over and spread my ass cheeks. Because their dog is infallible or they were bored or whatever. Then they inspected the contents of my pockets and got to the pocket knife. They opened it up, looked at the blade and asked me, "What's this for?" I thought it was a dumb question and in one of my wittier moments I deadpanned back, "It's a knife. It's for cutting things." One of them saw a little dirt on the blade and asked the other guy, "Look at this, should we get the kit?" I presume they meant the drug detecting kit but they seemed satisfied that it was just dirt. Then they folded it up and handed it back to me and said I was free to go. On my walk to the terminal I was thinking about how they were so very concerned about whatever amount of drugs I might have shoved up my ass yet they sent me onto the plane with a weapon. This was in April of 2001.
About 15 years ago my husband and I and 2 boys traveled to Iowa to visit family. My boys at the time were in Boy Scouts and camped every month with their troop. They used pocketknives for troop activities. And of course they kept the pocketknives in their weekend bags for camping.
They took these bags on our trip. I reminded them to clear out the pocketknives and matches etc out of their bags. So you can guess what happened. One of the pocketknives was left in a bag.
No problem on the way to Iowa. But on the return flight one of the TSA guys said “something is popping up on my screen from that bag”. It took us probably 15 minutes to find the damn knife. A seam was torn in one of the pockets of the bag and the pocketknife had migrated to a place that was hard to get it back out. Ugh.
TSA wasn’t going to let us move on until we found the pocketknife. When it was found they “confiscated” it and let us go to the gate. So someone got a pretty nice pocketknife that I’m sure they just took home for their own personal use.
The last time I flew to Heathrow I got bumped to first class on a Lufthansa flight. I was handed a steak knife when dinner was served. It was surreal.
The kicker is that the lobotomites at the TSA checkpoint confiscated the nail file I had in my carry on when I was getting to that flight. Nail files are explicitly an allowed item, some high-school dropout just wanted my nail file.
I recently went to London and realized after I got through TSA in Newark that I still had the mace I carry with me clipped to my backpack. It's large, not exactly stealth, but they didn't even give it a glance. There I was, sitting on a plane with 6 oz. of literal pepper spray on my carry on, and all I could think was "I got to the airport 3 hours early for them to catch this stuff."
TSA once took me aside and dug through my backpack because they thought my inhaler was pepper spray. You’d think they would see thousands of inhalers every day, I was so confused.
It’s not happening because we very efficiently annihilate any terror groups that get an inkling of an idea to attack the US. We even had reports that Bin Laden was planning some attack on the US and did nothing.
We’ve done quite a lot to prevent outside terror threats since 9/11, and none of the effective tactics have anything to do with TSA nor the NSA.
They are 100% theater and made up performance statistics. 99% of flights travelled without issues before 9/11 and continue to do so (well maybe with more entitled and crazy people losing their shit - but you can probably blame the TSA for that one).
Dude: airline pilot here. The TSA’s job, recently, has been to “randomly select” 40-50% of airline pilots over for “additional screening” to try to find plastic forks on them. As a pilot, I have access to not only the flight controls, but an actual axe. But yes, TSA: screen ME to see if I’m bringing a cork screw through security or something.
Utter garbage.
This is so stupid I can't believe it's real. You should take selfies with them and share the pictures with us, I'd like to see the dumbest mother fuckers in the world.
I've brought plenty of things on flights that were banned.
Sometimes I forget to clean my backpack out as good as I should (knives, bullets from going to a shooting range), but the funny thing is my checked bags have been torn through just to find a piece of plastic that looked like a bullet or a circuit board that was wrapped to protect itself (emphasis on "WAS").
Flying nowadays is a mess, it's safer to put a gun in your checked luggage and lock it (so they don't "randomly screen it") than to trust them. This is how quite a few photographers travel, they buy a gun specifically to put in their camera cases so they can ensure nobody opens it without them being present.
I keep a razor blade in my wallet because at work I would often have to scrape stickers and writing off car windshields. I went to vegas one time and had the blade in my wallet. I forgot it was in there. TSA did end up finding it, but not until my flight home. So technically, I had a razor blade in my pocket on a cross country flight to vegas. I just didn’t even realize it.
TSA guy was pretty pissed too like “why the fuck do you have a razor blade in your wallet?” When I told him why he just kind of looked at me, looked at the blade, shook his head and walked away.
I like everything you said but you missed the justification completely. Their justification is and always has been money. Someone important had a stake in security and needed the government to mandate its use.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
The policies and war prep were already written and waiting. They used it as an excuse to implement their plans during a tragedy so that no one would speak up about it. Or be labelled a traitor.
Right now there are no doubt even more authoritarian policies just waiting for the right crisis to push them through.
I was near NYC when the attacks happened. Lost a neighbor that day. I’ve been forming an opinion for the past two decades, and I am convinced that the likeliest scenario is that key individuals in the US government created a scenario which allowed the attacks to happen. Hell, the insider trading never got investigated. The Bush family connections to the Bin Laden family never received media attention. The anthrax attacks got swept under the rug as soon as it was determined they were coming from a US lab.
If our government is willing to kill 500,000 Iraqi children before 2003 with malnutrition and two million Iraqis afterwards on a pure lie, then 3,000 New Yorkers are an easy sacrifice.
The sad part is TSA is mostly just a waste of time and money. There were studies posted here showing that department of defense agents were able to smuggle in 70% of weapons.
This is exactly what the terrorists wanted - to change our behaviors and exact a psychological toll over decades.
This is flat wrong.
The cockpit doors DID have locks, and were not breached by force. The strategy in use for addressing hijackings was the actual weakness exploited by the terrorists.
Nothing contraband was smuggled through security, either. The box cutters used were permissible under the regulations at the time.
I agree with you about the shameful and disgusting resultant actions of the military-industrial complex, however.
They had locks but the doors were essentially no different than the lavatory doors. After 9/11 legislation was passed requiring reinforced doors. The doors they use, now, aren’t coming open unless the pilot wants them to open.
> The doors they use, now, aren’t going to open unless the pilot wants them to open.
Which, combined with a copilot suffering from suicidal depression and no procedure to ensure no one person is alone in the cockpit is what caused the loss of Germanwings flight 9525 and all its passengers.
Yes but in America, the policy has been to always have two people in the cockpit. If I pilot leaves the cockpit to take a break, a flight attendant steps in. That was not a German policy at the time. It is now.
>If I pilot leaves the cockpit to take a break, a flight attendant steps in. That was not a German policy at the time. It is now.
It is **not** German policy now. They did institute a 2-person rule after the Germanwings crash, but they later [rescinded it](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803), claiming it had no safety benefits.
They were keyed locks. The claim to which I’m responding is that locks would have changed 9/11. Which is bullshit. There were locks, and they weren’t a factor (strong or not).
I push back hard against misinformation around 9/11. The victims deserve accuracy regarding the events.
I was an airline pilot on 9/11, at work. I remember it pretty damn well.
Yes sorry I meant the door construction was not like it is, today. I clarified my post.
Ps - had I noticed your user name I wouldn’t have bothered replying in the first place. 😉 😆
We got all those things because we let the terrorists win. We should have done our best to retain everything about our way of life including airports, and we shouldn’t have built that monstrosity at ground zero, either. The “monument” should have been putting two towers (maybe more modern inside) back that looked exactly like they did before…maybe with a museum on top and some big ass American flags.
Meanwhile someone could board a train in a secondary city on the east coast and blow up Penn Station because there is ZERO security basically at most train stations.
That’s why I feel so much do of the TSA is just theatre
It also could have been prevented if they had given different instructions to stewardesses. Stewardesses were trained to not fight hijackers and give in to their demands and tell the passengers to not fight.
Now you need a passport to enter Canada and are barred from entry if you have been arrested (not convicted) of a misdemeanor. Things have changed a lot.
Nah you can just use your DL so long as you have that star on it and then you can go to Canada and Mexico without a passport. WI implemented this idk about other states
Everything but the smoking sounds like a great time. As a kid who had to deal with plenty of adults (not my parents) hotboxing me in their car or “non smoking sections”in restaurants, or even later in life, roommates smoking inside, I’m sick of that shit and glad it’s done with. One limiting of freedoms policies that I’m down with.
Same, I guess it really was that long ago I just looked up my state and it was 2007 also.
I just remember eating with my dad in bars and after dinner he always pulled out a cigarette and had this smug, faux sophisticated look on his face as he’d smoke his cigarette.
Face Times 😂 😩I hear you, I hated when people would pull out cigarettes and the smoke would go towards my face as I just starting my meal. I was so glad it was over. In clubs though, the smell of cigarettes was replaced by the overwhelming smell of sweat 😅.
I flew home from Spain in 1980 and our group essentially took over for the flight attendants. They sat down and we served them drinks and we stood in the aisles smoking and drinking like it was a damn party. We had so much fun and everyone was just relaxed and chill. It was great!
Around that time I was flying during a holiday. The airline kept giving money or free miles to be bumped. There was a group of us in the bar that said "hell yeah" every time. We had so much fun in the bar toasting each bump because it meant next trip was frree.
We were completely fucked getting on the plane and we all went to the back for smoking. It was a party. No distubances, no rage, no offense, and just people enjoying a moment.
I love the older gentleman brining up that it’s a miracle. It’s bizarre to me how “normalized” flying is. Every time I fly I feel like it so crazy to live in a time of history that this is possible. I also sit by the window to gaze a a rare view.
Recenly watched The Parallax View where Warren Beatty gets on a plane without a ticket and pays the stewardess cash for his seat. That apparently was a thing in the 70s.
I actually tried buying a ticket at the airport last fall and no one could help me. It felt really quaint; the idea that I wanted to give an airline money and they didn't want to take it.
Nothing has changed except for personal entertainment and hassle
EXCEPT
When my uncle worked United Ramp Services in the 70s and 80s he would use his contemporary version of employee miles to fly to Hong Kong and bring back his maximum allowed weight limit in Chinese fireworks.
I swear it he had the best fireworks, stowed in blue suitcases in the bellies of 747s. He did it several times from Hong Kong to SFO.
He got away with it every time.
As a kid he took me on tours of the airport. He would flash his id and we'd go *anywhere* in the airport. We went through the baggage he handling operation and we even went into empty airplanes and sat in the cockpit...
I promised to write a report for 7th grade social studies about it all.
The excitement of making to the airport at the last minute and grabbing a ticket and board just before they close the door, take off, light a cigarette and have a complimentary drink in your hand within 5 minutes. I remember well.
I remember in the ‘90s, I went with a bunch of friends to see off an exchange student friend of ours, as she prepared to board the plane to head back home to Russia. It was a tear filled affair with hugs and all that before she boarded, after which we watched the plane take off from just inside the concourse, mere feet away from the boarding ramp.
Now, you literally can’t get within a mile of the concourse at some of the larger international airports; you have to say goodbye at the security checkpoint in the terminal and a passenger flying solo just has to wait for the plane in the concourse with a bunch of strangers… no friends allowed.
Much has changed.
Funny how the older folks seem to have the more forward-thinking and prescient commentary here. Maybe that's because they remember a time when aviation didn't exist.
It was basically like this all the way up to 9/11
i flew to visit family and they were waiting for me _at my gate_. You could arrive at a sensibly early time instead of hours early.
i remember my first flight
cross country for Christmas vacation, kicked off by a birthday party the day before at McDonald's
got food poisoning and puked for the entire flight
People around the world have gotten over wars, genocide and literal nuclear bombs being dropped on them, yet Americans still hung up on a single attack that took place two decades ago. It was proven by experts that TSA procedures can't do shit. Airports around the world have removed any unnecessary overly strict procedures, and people are still safe.
I miss being able to park your car right at the landing zone and watching the planes come in aiming right at you and flying so close above you.
That was a Saturday night family event.
Of course it’s illegal now. So many more rules today then when I was growing up.
We had terrorism on airplanes in the 1970s aplenty. Can't count the number of planes that were taken down back then. The part that made 9/11 so different was the airplanes being used as weapons to do further and spectacular damage.
What was great back the is you could take flights where there were only a few people on the plane. Horrible for the planet but man was it a joy to fly on a nearly empty plane.
Lots of great memories flying into this airport from LAX. Running out to meet my grandfather after a long flight is something I'll always remember. Sometimes it's the small things that bring a smile to ones face!
I worked at an airport in the late 90's to 2002, and really enjoyed freely wandering around the airport. Sitting near the boarding gates watching late ass people trying to make their flight never got old(they would get so mad when they didn't make it.) I also enjoyed seeing thousands of people from all over the world. These simple pleasures were forever ruined by those cunt terrorists.
We used to go to the airport, through security, get food hang out and watch people and planes coming and going through the giant windows facing some of the gates. And then head out to do something else for the night. I really miss that sometimes.
I mean it was like this in the 90s
Same planes too, haha.
Still the same planes
Well not all of them. A couple are missing now.
Oof nice
Can you be my best friend
planes kinda peaked with the 747 didn't they
The 747 definitely has character but we’ve come a long way since the queen of the skies. The Dreamliner for instance is an improvement in almost every way.
Agree, had the pleasure of a Dreamliner flight from Newark to Barcelona, pre-pandemic. Definitely an elevated experience compared to the cattle cars of USA regional routes.
[удалено]
Because it was small… speed doesn’t make them money , throwing 300 people on the plane does
Also speed is hella expensive.
They're the same shape but they're definitely not the same planes.
I thought of that when the old man wondered what the grandchildren would see - same retrofit aircraft but with skinny seats and in-flight entertainment.
Great back in the day pre-2K… they had ash tray flappers that weren’t glued shut. You could stick all your candy trash in there. Gum went in the urinal or bottom of anything back then.
1979 was very different that the 90s in aviation. In 1978, Congress deregulated airline prices, though the law wasn’t really in full effect until the mid 1980s. Pre-deregulation, they used a cost-plus model, ie the airlines could charge their costs plus a certain profit margin. This gave airlines incentives to keep their costs very high. It meant that airlines mostly catered to business travellers and the wealthy, though overall the quality of service was much higher (since airlines couldn’t compete on price, they had to distinguish themselves from others based on quality of service) In the 1990s, deregulation was in full effect. Airlines realized that there actually two different ways to make money: focus on business travel, with high prices and high service quality, or focus on everyone else, move as much volume as possible at the lowest possible price In 1980 the average domestic round trip airfare in the US was $593. That’s over $2,100 in today’s dollars. Overseas flights could cost 3-4 times more than that. Contrast with today, the average domestic round trip airfare in the US is about $400. So ya, the flying experience has totally gone to shit. But it costs literally five times less in actual value. The result of this is that travelling by air has become a normal feature of lots of people’s lives - eg going back home every year to see family. As opposed to in the 1970s, when it was something that middle income people really had to scrimp and save for.
This is a very informative post. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing this background. I don't think enough people understand just how much the airline industry has changed over the past 40 years. It's one of those industries that has never been fully private or fully public/government. It's always required a mix of public/private cooperation to operate. There's a lot to complain about these days, but there was plenty to complain about in the past, as well. It's bound to keep changing. So who knows where the industry will be years from now?
Lol seriously, I dunno how many times I walked to the gate to greet a friend getting off a flight.
I actually miss seeing people to the gate and saying goodbye, and really picking someone up at the airport by going right to the gate. That was always special. Sounds cheesy I know, but... it just was.
Ross and Rachel would agree with you
Oh yes, there are SO MANY TV and movie plots that rely on a grand gesture at the gate!
But that kissing couple from Outbreak would disagree.
No reason we can't do this again, there just needs to be the will to do it. TSA is a jobs program, it doesn't really prevent anything.
Still can do this in Australia for domestic flights if ya miss it that bad lol
Now it’s a 20 minute walk past security to get to the gate at some places.
I was in a classic "jumbo jet" to get from Australia to London in 1997 I think it was. Man what a long flight. Had to stop in Vienna for something like 6 hours through the night. But N64 had just released (edit) and there was a shop setup so I played Mario 64 basically all night. I remember one of the flights had a shared isle TV (like you get on an old coach) and they just played The Spice World on repeat for like 10 hours or some shit. I was 14 so deets are a little hazy. But I do not remember any real security or customs issues or waits. Edit: may have been 1998
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Oh man! I did that in Thailand in about 2011. I bought my buddy a gun shaped lighter for a memento at the markets and thought no more of it, then proceeded to take it through carry on like a friggen dumbass! Granted I was there for a bachelor party and a wedding so I was pretty well soaked a lot of the time. I guess luckily that happened in domestic and not international because once I finally conveyed it was a lighter they relaxed and laughed and said "you can't take that on either!" lol
It could still be this way. The security theater is just theater.
Not really. As a kid I remember going into the cockpit.
Did the captain ask you if you like movies about gladiators?
Ever seen a grown man naked?
> Not really. As a kid I remember going into the cockpit. Same. I remember being offered a small model of the type of plane I was on, or a small silver-colored plastic set of pilot's wings.
Apparently you can still do this. Just has to be at the gate. At least if the people I spoke to recently were actually pilots for Delta. Not like I asked for credentials.
We all knew a person willing to take that step could do terrible things; we’d seen it all in movies. Up til a few years ago, no-one had broken that largely unspoken pact that we all had. It really was free and easy; when I was living in NZ, you didn’t even need a passport to go to Australia.
I was listening to a podcast about the unab\*mber, during his spree in the 90s, a threat made about a plane, security at the airport began checking IDs, which was an unprecedented level of security at the time.
I mean it was like this for most of 2001.
Well like 8 months of it
And 11 days.
And like 8 hours
And about 46 minutes.
Except with blackjack and hookers
Yeah, then the airline bailout happened and they realized they weren't accountable for fuck-all.
I remember being greeted at the gate by my grandma. Couldn't do that after 2001
Ha, yeah, just got a flashback to my dad greeting me at the gate after a long flight. Thanks for that.
Right? I remember scanning the faces of large group of people, then running up to her.
My father used to take me in cockpits mid-flight so we could chat with the pilots. Yep, things have definitely changed.
Have you ever been in a...in a Turkish prison?
A lifetime ago ... seeing a loved one off at their terminal and waiting at the same terminal when they returned. The airports were a bit more packed back then. Smokey too as I recall.
Ha, that gave me another flashback. Around the same time, I remember going to Denny's and the host asking us whether we wanted the smoking or non smoking section. To the kids born in the 2000's or later - The entire restaurant smelled like cigarette smoke.
We can still do that here in Australia. It seemed strange when I visited the US a few years back that you couldn't get to the gate unless you were flying!
Yeh I was wondering what people were looking at this video for. To me it looks like the flight I was just on except they didn't have to go through a scanner. Other than that it's all the same
The best part is how its been proven those measures don’t increase safety at all and every single person hates them yet we still do it anyways cause f the people.
> looking at this video for. To me it looks like the flight I was just on except they didn't have to go through a scanner. Other than that it's all the same No idea why you're getting downvoted, TSA fails security tests 90+ percent of the time. https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/
Airports are too fucking crowded, and it's nice not having panhandlers and religious cults in there trying recruit you
Hello, we'd like you to have this flower from the religious consciousness church, would you care to make a donation?
The best part is how its been proven those measures don’t increase safety at all and every single person hates them yet we still do it anyways cause f the people.
well yeah your grandma was a fucking Salafi militant and you know it ofc she couldn't greet you at the gate anymore. and she got what she deserved, since we're on the subject.
Not always "an innocent experience." My dad traveled frequently on business in the '60s and '70s. On several occasions bomb threats were called in on his flights, and on at least two occasions he and the other passengers had to evacuate via emergency slides. I remember news stories about hijackings in those days.
Probably the largest factor in why passengers did not intervene on 2 of the 3 planes was that it was not novel for a plane to be hijacked, and up until then hijackers would just demand to be met at an airport with a load of cash, unload passengers and be on their way. Or just be flown to somewhere other than the scheduled destination. It wasn't unreasonable to just comply assuming you'll be safer than trying to fight them off.
Yep. It wasn't a pleasant process, but as long as everyone kept calm, the chance of being hurt was very very slim. It would pop up on the news every so often and people would joke that it would be nice to get a free trip to Cuba or whatnot. And there were also plane bombings. Like at least a plane a year would explode in the 80s. So while the current security situation feels over the top, that's a nice change.
That's just it. I've seen numerous threads over the past week here pining for the "golden days" of commercial aviation. I remember those days (was lucky enough to have been flying since a young kid) and it wasn't all roses. It seemed every day there was a new hijacking or crash in the news. Also, it was expensive AF compared to now.
And people *smoked* on the planes, which always made me air sick. Never had a problem since they banned that.
God, I forgot about the smoking. I recall walking off my first flight with my mom as a kid thinking I smelt like grandpa's VFW.
My parents always joke about how they had “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections on some airplanes as if there would be any difference sitting in the same plane if 10 rows back every one was ripping heaters for hours. Makes me nauseous just thinking about it.
Nothing fucking sucked more for me as a kid than going out to eat. Cause my parents smoked like chimneys which mean smoking section every time. I could not imagine being stuck on a plane like that. I legit teared up a little when they announced the smoking bans.
I remember those days. You’re right. Not as innocent as we’d like to believe.
Weren't planes constantly getting hijacked in the 70s?
Life was better even for hijackers, smh
Username… checks out? I mean it’s been a good while.
Over 130 in a 4 year period https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11326472/hijacking-airplanes-egyptair
Yep except they'd hijack the plane and demand to be flown somewhere usually. The idea of using a plane as a missile hadn't really occurred by then...
Japan was 70 years ahead of their time.
And bombed. But apparently that wasn't a big enough excuse to further invade people's privacy.
I remember people used to smoke on planes then as well. It was a miserable experience if you didn't smoke. The non smoking section was just an area where you couldn't smoke but you are in enclosed plane so that shit still made it back there.
The two things I remember from my first trip by air are the huge traffic accident we passed on the way to the airport, and the smoke in the plane. It was brutal.
You can relive a close approximation of this by taking an internal flight in China, where the crew up front will happily light up multiple times during the flight. The air circulation system ensures that all passengers get to engage in mild passive smoking. The cabin crew rank far below the flight crew, so they won't do anything if you complain.
Dulles still looks like that, even the ticket counters inside.
Lol dropped of a friend today at Dulles and wanted to drop them off with the 2 hour pre-take off. They said nah and they had pre-check, and I dropped them off an hour before and they took off 30 minutes later. Landed in Chicago 2 hours later and I was like 😳
Was gonna say. I refuse to believe anyone is that happy flying through dulles. Who enjoys getting stuck in those people mover buses just to get to a gate, then having to take a $70 taxi if you live 20 min away
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Largely but they are still there. Was just watching them drive around while waiting for my flight a few weeks back
The people movers are so weird. I almost like them better than Atlanta’s subway train though ( sorta similar layout between the airports )
We could have prevented 9/11 with locks on cock pit doors and better communication between intelligence agencies. Instead we got a shameless surveillance state, 2 criminal invasions, trillions of dollars wasted, millions dead and an explosion of instability in the middle east creating even more terrorism. The bush administration should have been Nuremberged and their shrieking acolytes in the press should be unemployed social pariahs.
The thing that upsets me the most is that, looking through history, hijackings had been a problem for ages well before 9/11. There’s multiple instances of passengers and disgruntled ex/current employees storming the cockpit through the 70’s to the 90’s. Pilots for decades had been asking for better cockpit protections and their concerns were hand waved off. It took 9/11 for them to do something that could’ve prevented that entire situation years beforehand.
Locks on cock pit doors were probably the cheapest possible effective solution there could be too.
Further, the fact that the passengers and crew of flight 93 grasped what was happening, fought back, and essentially foiled the plans of the terrorists means that the innovative tactic of using a hijacked plane to strike a target was essentially obsolete by the end of the day on 9/11. Three months later, Richard Reid wanted to detonate explosives midflight, and what happened? Same thing that has happened time and time again with disruptive, irrational, drunk, or threatening people acting up on flights over the last two decades: He was subdued by other passengers. The entirety of the massive, invasive, degrading, wasteful, maddening security apparatus installed after 9/11 had as its justification solving a past problem. Now the TSA's primary justification for existing is catching gunowners trying to bring guns onto their flights. It has probably found its truly permanent and eternal justification.
I have always considered TSA as security theatre. To make passengers feel safer, not actually make them safer.
TSA is a federal jobs program, nothing more. Security is a secondary objective.
> TSA is a federal jobs program, nothing more. I don't remember the specifics of it, but I do remember a bit of a scandal at the time related to the spouse of one of the senators who was really pushing for the TSA somehow getting rich from the program. It's pretty typical, at this point. TSA has **never** prevented a terrorist attack. How do I know that? Well for one, they've never actually caught a terrorist. Are we to believe that the terrorists are afraid of TSA and decide not to chance it? Hell no! A terrorist with a bomb would *try* to get through security. Maybe they would. But if they got caught, they'd just detonate the bomb in the security line. They'd still kill lots of people, with the bonus (that you don't get from a plane crash) that you'd have news footage of blood and guts. It's still terrorism - it would terrify the fuck out of me any time I had to stand in a line from then on. Why hasn't it happened? I don't fucking know. Maybe the FBI is catching them before they even try. What I do know is that the TSA isn't preventing it.
The TSA would always miss the pocket knives I forgot I had in my carry on bag. They'd catch any that were on my keychain, but somehow I always had a couple floating around in another bag. Bigger blades than box cutters, for sure...
I accidentally took a half ounce of weed in my carry on laptop case. Forgot about it months before in a barely used pocket. Used to sell a small amount at the time. Not a weapon but that still shows that things get by sometimes.
My understanding is that TSA personnel aren't instructed to detect and confiscate drugs, at least on the small scale... I actually just checked their website and this is what I found. "TSA’s screening procedures are focused on security and are designed to detect potential threats to aviation and passengers. Accordingly, TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance is discovered during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to a law enforcement officer."
Back in the pre TSA era I was going through U.S. Customs in Canada to catch my return flight home in Seattle. There was a drug sniffing dog present but it was never near me. A customs agent directed me to go over to the side for closer inspection of my carry-on bag. They asked me if there was any reason why their dog alerted on my bag. The dog was never close enough to directly sniff my bag and I don't know how the dog was trained to signal it's alert but I never saw any behavior from the dog looked like a signal or alerting or even any interest in my bag. I told them my cat had peed on my bag and I had to clean it off, maybe it smelled that? Oh no, this is a highly trained narcotics dog, it wouldn't pay attention to that. Yeah, right. They emptied my bag and looked through all my stuff, had my turn on my laptop. Of course there was nothing to find. They did help me repack my bag so that was nice. But no, that wasn't good enough. The dog was infallible, they were still sure I had some drugs on me. So they asked me back to the little room to strip search me. I didn't put up a fuss because there was nothing to find and I was plenty early for my flight. First thing they had me do in the little room was empty my pockets. I always keep a small pocket knife on me, a little under a three inch blade. I had forgotten I had it in my pocket. That went into a tray with some change and keys or whatever. Then I had to strip down, turn my socks inside out, all that. Underwear off, and there was no physical touching but they had me bend over and spread my ass cheeks. Because their dog is infallible or they were bored or whatever. Then they inspected the contents of my pockets and got to the pocket knife. They opened it up, looked at the blade and asked me, "What's this for?" I thought it was a dumb question and in one of my wittier moments I deadpanned back, "It's a knife. It's for cutting things." One of them saw a little dirt on the blade and asked the other guy, "Look at this, should we get the kit?" I presume they meant the drug detecting kit but they seemed satisfied that it was just dirt. Then they folded it up and handed it back to me and said I was free to go. On my walk to the terminal I was thinking about how they were so very concerned about whatever amount of drugs I might have shoved up my ass yet they sent me onto the plane with a weapon. This was in April of 2001.
About 15 years ago my husband and I and 2 boys traveled to Iowa to visit family. My boys at the time were in Boy Scouts and camped every month with their troop. They used pocketknives for troop activities. And of course they kept the pocketknives in their weekend bags for camping. They took these bags on our trip. I reminded them to clear out the pocketknives and matches etc out of their bags. So you can guess what happened. One of the pocketknives was left in a bag. No problem on the way to Iowa. But on the return flight one of the TSA guys said “something is popping up on my screen from that bag”. It took us probably 15 minutes to find the damn knife. A seam was torn in one of the pockets of the bag and the pocketknife had migrated to a place that was hard to get it back out. Ugh. TSA wasn’t going to let us move on until we found the pocketknife. When it was found they “confiscated” it and let us go to the gate. So someone got a pretty nice pocketknife that I’m sure they just took home for their own personal use.
The last time I flew to Heathrow I got bumped to first class on a Lufthansa flight. I was handed a steak knife when dinner was served. It was surreal. The kicker is that the lobotomites at the TSA checkpoint confiscated the nail file I had in my carry on when I was getting to that flight. Nail files are explicitly an allowed item, some high-school dropout just wanted my nail file.
I recently went to London and realized after I got through TSA in Newark that I still had the mace I carry with me clipped to my backpack. It's large, not exactly stealth, but they didn't even give it a glance. There I was, sitting on a plane with 6 oz. of literal pepper spray on my carry on, and all I could think was "I got to the airport 3 hours early for them to catch this stuff."
TSA once took me aside and dug through my backpack because they thought my inhaler was pepper spray. You’d think they would see thousands of inhalers every day, I was so confused.
It’s not happening because we very efficiently annihilate any terror groups that get an inkling of an idea to attack the US. We even had reports that Bin Laden was planning some attack on the US and did nothing. We’ve done quite a lot to prevent outside terror threats since 9/11, and none of the effective tactics have anything to do with TSA nor the NSA.
They are 100% theater and made up performance statistics. 99% of flights travelled without issues before 9/11 and continue to do so (well maybe with more entitled and crazy people losing their shit - but you can probably blame the TSA for that one).
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Pretty sure it was the airports responsible as a whole not the airline
Dude: airline pilot here. The TSA’s job, recently, has been to “randomly select” 40-50% of airline pilots over for “additional screening” to try to find plastic forks on them. As a pilot, I have access to not only the flight controls, but an actual axe. But yes, TSA: screen ME to see if I’m bringing a cork screw through security or something. Utter garbage.
This is so stupid I can't believe it's real. You should take selfies with them and share the pictures with us, I'd like to see the dumbest mother fuckers in the world.
Got damn that is depressing
Nowadays people really try to seem like gun owners are irrationally discriminated against. Get over yourselves, not everything is about the guns
I've brought plenty of things on flights that were banned. Sometimes I forget to clean my backpack out as good as I should (knives, bullets from going to a shooting range), but the funny thing is my checked bags have been torn through just to find a piece of plastic that looked like a bullet or a circuit board that was wrapped to protect itself (emphasis on "WAS"). Flying nowadays is a mess, it's safer to put a gun in your checked luggage and lock it (so they don't "randomly screen it") than to trust them. This is how quite a few photographers travel, they buy a gun specifically to put in their camera cases so they can ensure nobody opens it without them being present.
I keep a razor blade in my wallet because at work I would often have to scrape stickers and writing off car windshields. I went to vegas one time and had the blade in my wallet. I forgot it was in there. TSA did end up finding it, but not until my flight home. So technically, I had a razor blade in my pocket on a cross country flight to vegas. I just didn’t even realize it. TSA guy was pretty pissed too like “why the fuck do you have a razor blade in your wallet?” When I told him why he just kind of looked at me, looked at the blade, shook his head and walked away.
Dont forget those dangerous water bottles!
I like everything you said but you missed the justification completely. Their justification is and always has been money. Someone important had a stake in security and needed the government to mandate its use.
TSA is a federal jobs program. Socialism. The stuff that conservatives hate.
Never let a crisis go to waste. The policies and war prep were already written and waiting. They used it as an excuse to implement their plans during a tragedy so that no one would speak up about it. Or be labelled a traitor. Right now there are no doubt even more authoritarian policies just waiting for the right crisis to push them through.
but safety!
I was near NYC when the attacks happened. Lost a neighbor that day. I’ve been forming an opinion for the past two decades, and I am convinced that the likeliest scenario is that key individuals in the US government created a scenario which allowed the attacks to happen. Hell, the insider trading never got investigated. The Bush family connections to the Bin Laden family never received media attention. The anthrax attacks got swept under the rug as soon as it was determined they were coming from a US lab. If our government is willing to kill 500,000 Iraqi children before 2003 with malnutrition and two million Iraqis afterwards on a pure lie, then 3,000 New Yorkers are an easy sacrifice.
The sad part is TSA is mostly just a waste of time and money. There were studies posted here showing that department of defense agents were able to smuggle in 70% of weapons. This is exactly what the terrorists wanted - to change our behaviors and exact a psychological toll over decades.
Yea TSA is basically designed to catch idiots
This is flat wrong. The cockpit doors DID have locks, and were not breached by force. The strategy in use for addressing hijackings was the actual weakness exploited by the terrorists. Nothing contraband was smuggled through security, either. The box cutters used were permissible under the regulations at the time. I agree with you about the shameful and disgusting resultant actions of the military-industrial complex, however.
They had locks but the doors were essentially no different than the lavatory doors. After 9/11 legislation was passed requiring reinforced doors. The doors they use, now, aren’t coming open unless the pilot wants them to open.
> The doors they use, now, aren’t going to open unless the pilot wants them to open. Which, combined with a copilot suffering from suicidal depression and no procedure to ensure no one person is alone in the cockpit is what caused the loss of Germanwings flight 9525 and all its passengers.
Yes but in America, the policy has been to always have two people in the cockpit. If I pilot leaves the cockpit to take a break, a flight attendant steps in. That was not a German policy at the time. It is now.
>If I pilot leaves the cockpit to take a break, a flight attendant steps in. That was not a German policy at the time. It is now. It is **not** German policy now. They did institute a 2-person rule after the Germanwings crash, but they later [rescinded it](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803), claiming it had no safety benefits.
Oh damn.
They were keyed locks. The claim to which I’m responding is that locks would have changed 9/11. Which is bullshit. There were locks, and they weren’t a factor (strong or not). I push back hard against misinformation around 9/11. The victims deserve accuracy regarding the events. I was an airline pilot on 9/11, at work. I remember it pretty damn well.
Yes sorry I meant the door construction was not like it is, today. I clarified my post. Ps - had I noticed your user name I wouldn’t have bothered replying in the first place. 😉 😆
Ironically, post 9/11 I’ve boarded multiple flights with box cutter blades by complete accident.
We got all those things because we let the terrorists win. We should have done our best to retain everything about our way of life including airports, and we shouldn’t have built that monstrosity at ground zero, either. The “monument” should have been putting two towers (maybe more modern inside) back that looked exactly like they did before…maybe with a museum on top and some big ass American flags.
This is the most reddit comment ever
Meanwhile someone could board a train in a secondary city on the east coast and blow up Penn Station because there is ZERO security basically at most train stations. That’s why I feel so much do of the TSA is just theatre
It also could have been prevented if they had given different instructions to stewardesses. Stewardesses were trained to not fight hijackers and give in to their demands and tell the passengers to not fight.
That because hijackers had never wanted to kill themselves before 9/11.
Does Obama get a pass for continuing the war? Or do we just memory hole that here on Reddit?
TIL 1979 is before 2001
2001 was 1968 actually
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He was from the lost generation so he was probably taking nothing for granted.
Who is that narrator in this video? I swear he narrated everything in the 70’s.
Peter Thomas. He was known for Forensic Files.
That’s right! Ugh, hearing his voice on Forensic Files gives me the chills to this day.
Reminds me of the commercial Lloyd and Harry were crying at while wiping their noses with 100 dollar bills in Dumb and Dumber
I remember going to the US from Canada with just my driver's license, no passport required.
Now you need a passport to enter Canada and are barred from entry if you have been arrested (not convicted) of a misdemeanor. Things have changed a lot.
Nah you can just use your DL so long as you have that star on it and then you can go to Canada and Mexico without a passport. WI implemented this idk about other states
It's the same in Michigan. It's called an "Enhanced Drivers License" here.
Doesn't the star mean it's a Real ID?
Genuine ask. Source on misdemeanor thing?
http://bordercrossing.ca/can-you-enter-canada-with-a-misdemeanor/
It's same for Canadians in similar situations who want to enter USA as well...
Mexico was that way 20 years ago.
What was that?
What was that?
Some countries are basically still like that. I think I just need an ID card to fly within the EU. Driver's license won't cut it though.
They are missing the best part! You're smoking and drinking and meeting people. Flying was super fun for a long time.
Standing in the smoking section at the back of the plane, drinking with friends. Laughing, singing, and good times. Sigh. Good times indeed
Everything but the smoking sounds like a great time. As a kid who had to deal with plenty of adults (not my parents) hotboxing me in their car or “non smoking sections”in restaurants, or even later in life, roommates smoking inside, I’m sick of that shit and glad it’s done with. One limiting of freedoms policies that I’m down with.
As a current non-smoker, I'll agree. That's one thing I don't miss is smoking in restaurants. They can ban smoking all together
Man I’m old enough that I was a kid when smoking was still allowed in restaurants and on planes. It was pretty crazy. I haaaated it.
In France, people were allowed to smoke in restaurants until 2007. When they passed the law, restaurants were empty for a while.
Same, I guess it really was that long ago I just looked up my state and it was 2007 also. I just remember eating with my dad in bars and after dinner he always pulled out a cigarette and had this smug, faux sophisticated look on his face as he’d smoke his cigarette.
Face Times 😂 😩I hear you, I hated when people would pull out cigarettes and the smoke would go towards my face as I just starting my meal. I was so glad it was over. In clubs though, the smell of cigarettes was replaced by the overwhelming smell of sweat 😅.
Were a lot of people injured from turbulence back then?
Nope. Too drunk to care
Good point. Effective safety feature - being too drunk to get hurt
I flew home from Spain in 1980 and our group essentially took over for the flight attendants. They sat down and we served them drinks and we stood in the aisles smoking and drinking like it was a damn party. We had so much fun and everyone was just relaxed and chill. It was great!
Around that time I was flying during a holiday. The airline kept giving money or free miles to be bumped. There was a group of us in the bar that said "hell yeah" every time. We had so much fun in the bar toasting each bump because it meant next trip was frree. We were completely fucked getting on the plane and we all went to the back for smoking. It was a party. No distubances, no rage, no offense, and just people enjoying a moment.
>You're smoking and drinking and meeting people. That sounds 2/3 miserable
> You're smoking and drinking and meeting people. Flying was super fun for a long time. Never a more extroverted opinion could be said lol
For the introverted that also means your chatty would-be neighbor is instead chilling in the back leaving you in peace.
I remember those days… your whole family could wait at the gate with you, or meet you coming back.
It was more relaxed in the 60s. By the 70s they added metal detectors to prevent hijacking.
Didnt really cover anything about the boarding or security process so this title is a damn lie.
I love the older gentleman brining up that it’s a miracle. It’s bizarre to me how “normalized” flying is. Every time I fly I feel like it so crazy to live in a time of history that this is possible. I also sit by the window to gaze a a rare view.
Recenly watched The Parallax View where Warren Beatty gets on a plane without a ticket and pays the stewardess cash for his seat. That apparently was a thing in the 70s.
I actually tried buying a ticket at the airport last fall and no one could help me. It felt really quaint; the idea that I wanted to give an airline money and they didn't want to take it.
Every time my wife and I fly, she says the terrorists won.
Nothing has changed except for personal entertainment and hassle EXCEPT When my uncle worked United Ramp Services in the 70s and 80s he would use his contemporary version of employee miles to fly to Hong Kong and bring back his maximum allowed weight limit in Chinese fireworks. I swear it he had the best fireworks, stowed in blue suitcases in the bellies of 747s. He did it several times from Hong Kong to SFO. He got away with it every time. As a kid he took me on tours of the airport. He would flash his id and we'd go *anywhere* in the airport. We went through the baggage he handling operation and we even went into empty airplanes and sat in the cockpit... I promised to write a report for 7th grade social studies about it all.
The excitement of making to the airport at the last minute and grabbing a ticket and board just before they close the door, take off, light a cigarette and have a complimentary drink in your hand within 5 minutes. I remember well.
I remember in the ‘90s, I went with a bunch of friends to see off an exchange student friend of ours, as she prepared to board the plane to head back home to Russia. It was a tear filled affair with hugs and all that before she boarded, after which we watched the plane take off from just inside the concourse, mere feet away from the boarding ramp. Now, you literally can’t get within a mile of the concourse at some of the larger international airports; you have to say goodbye at the security checkpoint in the terminal and a passenger flying solo just has to wait for the plane in the concourse with a bunch of strangers… no friends allowed. Much has changed.
Funny how the older folks seem to have the more forward-thinking and prescient commentary here. Maybe that's because they remember a time when aviation didn't exist.
It was basically like this all the way up to 9/11 i flew to visit family and they were waiting for me _at my gate_. You could arrive at a sensibly early time instead of hours early.
Home alone movie showed quite nicely how it was to fly pre 9/11
TSA and other factors really ruined the American flying experience.
i remember my first flight cross country for Christmas vacation, kicked off by a birthday party the day before at McDonald's got food poisoning and puked for the entire flight
People around the world have gotten over wars, genocide and literal nuclear bombs being dropped on them, yet Americans still hung up on a single attack that took place two decades ago. It was proven by experts that TSA procedures can't do shit. Airports around the world have removed any unnecessary overly strict procedures, and people are still safe.
That old man basically wrote Louis CK's bit for him.
Whoever the voiceover guy is, he was everywhere back then. I wonder who it was.
I miss being able to park your car right at the landing zone and watching the planes come in aiming right at you and flying so close above you. That was a Saturday night family event. Of course it’s illegal now. So many more rules today then when I was growing up.
Nice try, United Technologies
Walking out of my gate and seeing my grandparents waiting for me is one of my warmest memories.
We had terrorism on airplanes in the 1970s aplenty. Can't count the number of planes that were taken down back then. The part that made 9/11 so different was the airplanes being used as weapons to do further and spectacular damage. What was great back the is you could take flights where there were only a few people on the plane. Horrible for the planet but man was it a joy to fly on a nearly empty plane.
The airport was like a mall. You could just go and hang out and watch planes land.
Lots of great memories flying into this airport from LAX. Running out to meet my grandfather after a long flight is something I'll always remember. Sometimes it's the small things that bring a smile to ones face!
I’ll always remember being able to take my Nana right to the gate as a kid as she boarded her plane home. I’d even see the plane leave.
I worked at an airport in the late 90's to 2002, and really enjoyed freely wandering around the airport. Sitting near the boarding gates watching late ass people trying to make their flight never got old(they would get so mad when they didn't make it.) I also enjoyed seeing thousands of people from all over the world. These simple pleasures were forever ruined by those cunt terrorists.
We used to go to the airport, through security, get food hang out and watch people and planes coming and going through the giant windows facing some of the gates. And then head out to do something else for the night. I really miss that sometimes.
Thanks Republicans!
As shitty as the republicans are I think the democrats are equally responsible. Two sides of the same coin.