I used to enjoy flying, back in the GOOD OL'E DAYS. I never had a job that required flying, and as such, all of my flights were paid for by the dollars in my wallet. I have flown over 200,000 miles,  95% of those miles were flown domestically. 

The first time that I flew in a commercial airliner, was approximately 1961, it was a trip to Washington DC, which was a birthday gift from my mother. We flew into Washington Dulles Airport, which has an unusual way of deplaning the passengers. Instead of pulling up to the gate with a movable ramp meeting the plane, a plane arriving at Dulles had to park a substantial  distance from the terminal. A specially designed bus would pull up to the door and the passengers would deplane.

On my flight, my mother and myself wanted to have a photograph taken with the stewardess (term that was used when SERVICE meant something, as opposed to the "sit down, buckle up, don't make me MAD, or I will call the Air Marshal" attitude of the current crop of Flight Attendants.) After taking the photo with the stewardess, my mother led the way for deplaning. Something was different, the passengers left the plane and were now sitting in a bus. I had to tell my mother that everything was alright and that we needed to get on the bus. I learned about the airport buses from my Weekly Reader magazine.

I get a kick out of remembering that event. My mother was in charge of travel arrangements with the company that she worked for. Even in those early days of jet travel, she had a lot of experience with flying. I KNEW MORE THAN SHE DID. I was all puffed up with pride.

Those days of flying were the golden years of air travel, you would have been treated far superior than any flight experience taken today. Respect and service were the magic words, as opposed to the current way of looking at every passenger as a potential suspect . The airlines consider the paying customer to be nothing more than flying "cattle." The airlines just don't care, because they downgraded the PAYING CUSTOMER  into a piece of meat. A piece of meat doesn't have to be treated with respect.  Paying customers in the 60's and 70's were not considered cattle, they were the PASSENGERS. The paying public was KING.

The major airlines didn't know what to do when the discount airlines, like Southwest Airlines, started up. They used to be regulated and were FAT PIGS. A lot of money flowed out of corporate headquarters and it wasn't spent on anything worthwhile. They had to cut expenses, but don't cut the executives flamboyant corporate lifestyle. Cut the wages of the pilots and flight attendants, but keep the corporate champaign flowing. Thirty years of resentment followed. The resentment was focused on the ex-KING, aka the customer, instead of where it should have been focused.

Below is a magazine ad, from 1955. The ad talks about a more gentile way of travel, on a TWA Super G Constellation




I have uploaded a commercial for another defunct airline, from approx 1959. The Pan Am commercial shows the luxury that a First Class & Coach passenger could expect, on an international flight. I guarantee, you will get a kick out of it.  










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