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What was airline travel in the 80's like?

What was airline travel in the 80's like?

Old Sep 20, 2016, 8:41 am
  #16  
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I hated the long haul flights with smokers. Absolutely horrid.

Short haul flights were cool. In PHX you could show up 10-15 minutes before a flight to LAS and get a $39 or so ticket late at night. No security to speak of. Go on last flight out, gamble all night, fly back at 6-7am.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 9:32 am
  #17  
 
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The entire environment was unlike what we experience today.

1. Confirmations - The passenger needed to call and confirm that they planned to fly, and to check and ensure that the airline hadn't made any changes.

2. Check-in - The passenger could roll up to the desk 30 minutes before the flight, hand over the luggage, and stroll up to the gate with six friends and two pets without anyone batting an eye most of the time.

3. Security - The security varied WILDLY from airport to airport and country to country. In Chile the military would search cars and taxis down to dis-assembling mufflers entering airport grounds, while small airports in the US sometimes forgot to turn on the metal detectors.

4. Loads - Regulation meant that the market didn't drive routes, and airlines had a hard time maximizing loads. I flew many trans-Pacific flights on L1011 / 747 / DC10 / MD11 aircraft with less than 100 passengers.

5. Aircraft - Because route frequencies were generally lower, airlines that could afford it flew big aircraft. Domestic US routes with L1011 / 747 / DC10 / MD11 aircraft were very common.

6. Amenities - Because electronic IFE was rudimentary, airlines provided a lot of different in flight entertainments, such as playing cards, vacuum tube music earphones, toy airplanes, coloring books, even small board games.

7. Smoking - Yes. All the time. First-hand smoke and second-hand smoke guaranteed.

8. Luggage - Wheelie bags were very uncommon, and most folks used these metal stroller contraptions that strapped to their bags with bungee cords, or else just muscled their bags by hand. As a result, cabin baggage was far, far less of a hassle than today.

9. Food - Hot meals for everyone, even in circumstances that don't warrant it, like a 45-minute flight! Seriously, the amount of effort that went into feeding people on flights was enormous, and many of the dishes served were real eye-openers in terms of new foods for me anyway.

10. Layovers - Connections were much less tight than today, so if you were flying a long route overseas, your transit points often included hotel stays overnight as part of the ticket. Certain hotels in places like Hawaii, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami made their money on just this trade.

11. Customs and Immigration - International flights would include a good hour of concerted paperwork effort at the end, facilitated by the flight crew who gave out customs forms, immigration forms, inoculation forms, etc. and then counseled people on what to answer, translated terms to people who needed it, handed out and collected back pens, checked your work, etc. Who needs IFE when you can enable government bureaucracy?

12. Single city, multiple airports - There were many world cities of note that possessed International airports and Domestic Airports, and if your itinerary included this arrangement, you would land in the INT and take a taxi to the DOM airport or vice versa. This was particularly fun in Asian cities when the taxi ride could be tens of miles in the middle of the night in Bombay or Jakarta or Bangkok, for instance, adding a certain zest of the exotic to your three-day journey to your ultimate destination while jet-lagged, exhausted, possibly sick, etc.

13. Porters - The airports of the 80s had many, many porters to haul your non-wheeled luggage from the curb to check-in or baggage claim to taxi for you. I recall Pittsburgh in particular as having friendly, muscly porters ready RIGHT NOW and RIGHT THERE to help you.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 10:49 am
  #18  
 
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There were smoking sections on planes. If you didn't like cigarette smoke, even if you weren't in a smoking section, too bad!

Also, no E-tickets was a real pain. I recall one of my relatives who lost the paper tickets needed for a trip back from a family vacation. She had to buy a new ticket at the airport, which couldn't have been inexpensive.

My family took trains more back then, especially for last-minute trips when plane tickets would have been outrageously expensive.

People gripe about air travel today, but I think that it's better: much more technology, much more ability to get inexpensive fares at the last minute and get information yourself about fare options, and the ability to pay what I think are reasonable amounts for benefits that you want.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 10:57 am
  #19  
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Customs: I did a lot of travel to western Europe in the 1980s and I never had CBP search my bags upon my return, nor did I ever face extensive paperwork. IIRC the USA used the same basic blue form and other countries had one or two landing cards for immigration and customs.

In fact, the worst paperwork I can recall was when I walked into East Berlin for the day through Checkpoint Charlie and had to itemize the exact amounts of every currency I had with me. As I had been traveling throughout Europe, I had coins from about ten different countries to sort and count before crossing the border. Upon the return, I was required to itemize every pfenning of the mandatory East German Marks I exchanged, including tips for restroom attendants.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 11:18 am
  #20  
 
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I personally think it's a very good thing that you must have a ticket to go through security nowadays. I'm sure it worked in the past due to less people flying, but with how crowded airports are today it would probably turn most airports into complete zoos, which many already are.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 11:20 am
  #21  
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Originally Posted by MSPeconomist
In fact, the worst paperwork I can recall was when I walked into East Berlin for the day through Checkpoint Charlie and had to itemize the exact amounts of every currency I had with me. As I had been traveling throughout Europe, I had coins from about ten different countries to sort and count before crossing the border. Upon the return, I was required to itemize every pfenning of the mandatory East German Marks I exchanged, including tips for restroom attendants.
I'll have to ask my husband when he gets home, but we have a German friend who is a professor. He went to a conference in East Berlin, back in the day, and on his way in (I think), at the East Berlin checkpoint, he had to account for every penny he had. Well, sometime before going to the conference, he had picked up some food, eaten it in his car, and dropped the change (and the sandwich wrapper) either on the seat or on the floor (my German is pretty shaky). He had forgotten about it. So he is entering East Berlin, and the checkpoint guards search his car for . . . I don't know, contraband? And they find the sandwich wrapper and "foreign" (West German) currency. They went a little nuts/paranoid, thinking he was a smuggler, told him to get out of the car, and had him wait while they did a very thorough search. He thought, "This is it! I'm going to end up in a DDR (East German) prison for the rest of my life over a sandwich wrapper and some loose change." Different era . . .
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 11:27 am
  #22  
 
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Most of the big differences are noted above - smoking, aircraft not as full, wide body aircraft on short domestic routes, easy security etc one other item was the ease with which you could jump between airlines. Before 78 you could literally just go to the airport and ask for the next flight to LGA and whichever airline had the next flight would sell you a ticket. After 78 that changed a bit but it was still was in the 80s to get put on a different airline if your flight was cancelled or delayed. That still happens today - sometimes. But it was no big deal in the 80s.

Another 80s thing was overbooking. The airlines still do that today but in the 80s they weren't very good at it. And when you got bumped you were often paid in cash on the spot.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 11:33 am
  #23  
 
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Originally Posted by NYCommuter
Also, no E-tickets was a real pain. I recall one of my relatives who lost the paper tickets needed for a trip back from a family vacation. She had to buy a new ticket at the airport, which couldn't have been inexpensive.
There's another one. Tickets versus boarding passes. A ticket got you a flight, but to get a seat on the plane (I remember in the 70's dropping people off at the airport and they actually let me and my brother onto the plane so long as we left before they departed!) you needed a boarding pass, which you only got at the airport.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 12:00 pm
  #24  
 
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Oh, anyone remember the classified ads in newspapers where people resold airline tickets? "APRIL 7, Delta 10:30 AM New York to Phoenix, FEMALE". There were no ID checks for domestic tickets, only the gender had to match, which was an advantage if you had a gender-neutral name like "Pat".
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 12:11 pm
  #25  
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More room - seat width and pitch. Able to arrive at the airport 20 minutes before your flight and still make it. Carrying around a Travel Organizer with paper tickets, frequent traveler cards, etc.

Up front - salad cart, ice cream sundae cart - both made to order by your seat.

People Express seat selection - getting to the gate and looking at the mock-up of the cabin with little stickers for the seats, selecting the seat you wanted, and the agent pulling off the sticker and attaching it to your ticket. And flying home on People Express from college for $19 one-way.


Originally Posted by NYCommuter
There were smoking sections on planes. If you didn't like cigarette smoke, even if you weren't in a smoking section, too bad!
I remember flying to Cancun, up front, and being asked whether we wanted smoking or non-smoking. Knowing there were only 2 rows, with 2 seats on each side, we took smoking, assuring there would be no smoking on at least our half of the cabin.

Last edited by CPRich; Sep 20, 2016 at 12:16 pm
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 12:32 pm
  #26  
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It was much much more expensive, and that was good because it kept the filthy, stinking, lumpenproles out of the airport and the plane. You never saw trash-bag carry-ons or a family resembling the cast of Duck Dynasty chomping down on Burger King takeout onboard.

Seats were wider, there was more legroom, and they were cushier. It wasn't until the latter part of the 80's that airlines began swapping speed for volume.

In the 80's planes were generally faster. Seriously. The 727 was stupidly fast, as was the Trident. Oh, they burned more fuel, made more noise, and broke down more, but you got where you were going quickly. There was Concorde as well (this also lasted through the 90's in an ever-dwindling service). As I said earlier, speed was traded for volume. More butts in seats means more profit, and slower speed saves fuel which also means more profit.

Wide bodies did the transcons. There were less of them scheduled, so you only had a handful to choose from, but if you were going coast to coast odds are you would be riding in an L1011 or DC10..perhaps even a 747. This meant a less cramped ride, and generally more comfy. I still think the L1011 was one of the best riding aircraft. Oh, and that plane had like 7 lavatories in the back..nothing but lav doors back there. Always one available.

They used to serve food, on DOMESTIC!!! I don't mean allowing you to BUY some microwaved box, or some bag of apple crisps, or a pack with 11 peanuts in it. I mean it was included in the price of your ticket. Going from MIA to LAX? Full on hot meal. Oh, and drinks were free too. All you could drink until the stewardess (that's what they were called) cut you off.

Bag fees? OUTRAGEOUS! You checked everything. Also included in the price of your ticket.

Then, there were upgrades. Sometimes, if you just asked nicely. Imagine that! I used to score them on YYZ-FRA in the late 80's by name dropping the head of Lufthansa Canada whom I was aquainted with, or by flirting with the desk agent. Those people who still think you can score an UG by dressing nicely and kissing butt are remembering the 80's..and have no idea how much that has all changed.

Buying a ticket was a different ballgame. You called the airline and spoke to someone. You told them where you needed to go and when, and they would check what was available. You also used travel agents who would comparison shop. You would get your tickets mailed, pick them up at the airport, or get them from the local airline office. You could then check in at the airport roughly 1 hour before boarding, put your bag through an xray machine and get wanded, and be on your way. Security took less than a minute. No bins, no shoes off, etc. You didn't need a ticket or BP to pass security..so you could bring your friends and family to see you off, and to meet you right outside the jetway doors when you arrived.

You could smoke on planes. Some hated this, some loved it, most didn't care. I will say this though, it seems there were almost never unruly pax. And they didn't divert flights because someone got snippy with the cabin crew. This may be many things, including a lack of nicotine withdrawl, an absence of Ambien in the market, and less crowding of pax into tiny seats on small aircraft for long flights.

There were downsides though. For one thing, more crashes. It was the 80's where we learned about "metal fatigue" and "micro-fractures". Most of the planes in the 80's were 20 year old runners from the 60's and 70's with the exception of the 767. I was still flying on DC8's with CP Air up until 85. It was not unusual to run about 2 major crashes in the US per year. And there was a horrific period between 85 and 89 where it seemed way more than that. The 80's featured crashes like UA 232, Aloha Airlines 243 and JAL 123..spectacular mechanical failures. Also terrorist incidents like PAN AM 103 and Air India 182. And of course, way more pilot error crashes like Air Florida 90 and Delta 1141. Nowadays computers do more and fail less, there is better equipment for avoiding collisions with other aircraft or terrain, and better materials are being used. Domestic crashes of large commercial airliners are much more rare, and survivable incidents are becoming the norm.

Last edited by Proudelitist; Sep 20, 2016 at 12:48 pm
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 12:51 pm
  #27  
 
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My first flight was in 1979, I think, on Pan Am. I thought it was AMAZING. Certainly better than driving cross-country.

My family used to collect playing cards from flights until they stopped giving those out. Food was terrible. Still is, for the most part.

My dad flew a lot for business in the 60s and 70s, always had us kids dress up for flights. He'd wear a suit, I think. So it was classier, at least. I really don't miss that awful airport smell, which must have been partially from cigarette smokers. Still get a cloud of it as soon as I walk out of the terminal, which makes me want to vomit.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 1:04 pm
  #28  
 
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Originally Posted by DillPickles
My dad flew a lot for business in the 60s and 70s, always had us kids dress up for flights. He'd wear a suit, I think. So it was classier, at least.
In those days, my Mother had put a sports coat and tie on me for my first flight and my sister in a dress. She made it extremely clear that we were to be be polite at all times, respectful to everyone around us, quiet (speak only when spoken to), and well behaved. Anything else, she assured both of us that upon landing, we would both regret the day we were born.

It was a different era. Not better, but just different.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 1:42 pm
  #29  
 
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Originally Posted by Wilbur
The entire environment was unlike what we experience today.

1. Confirmations - The passenger needed to call and confirm that they planned to fly, and to check and ensure that the airline hadn't made any changes.

2. Check-in - The passenger could roll up to the desk 30 minutes before the flight, hand over the luggage, and stroll up to the gate with six friends and two pets without anyone batting an eye most of the time.

3. Security - The security varied WILDLY from airport to airport and country to country. In Chile the military would search cars and taxis down to dis-assembling mufflers entering airport grounds, while small airports in the US sometimes forgot to turn on the metal detectors.

4. Loads - Regulation meant that the market didn't drive routes, and airlines had a hard time maximizing loads. I flew many trans-Pacific flights on L1011 / 747 / DC10 / MD11 aircraft with less than 100 passengers.

5. Aircraft - Because route frequencies were generally lower, airlines that could afford it flew big aircraft. Domestic US routes with L1011 / 747 / DC10 / MD11 aircraft were very common.

6. Amenities - Because electronic IFE was rudimentary, airlines provided a lot of different in flight entertainments, such as playing cards, vacuum tube music earphones, toy airplanes, coloring books, even small board games.

7. Smoking - Yes. All the time. First-hand smoke and second-hand smoke guaranteed.

8. Luggage - Wheelie bags were very uncommon, and most folks used these metal stroller contraptions that strapped to their bags with bungee cords, or else just muscled their bags by hand. As a result, cabin baggage was far, far less of a hassle than today.

9. Food - Hot meals for everyone, even in circumstances that don't warrant it, like a 45-minute flight! Seriously, the amount of effort that went into feeding people on flights was enormous, and many of the dishes served were real eye-openers in terms of new foods for me anyway.

10. Layovers - Connections were much less tight than today, so if you were flying a long route overseas, your transit points often included hotel stays overnight as part of the ticket. Certain hotels in places like Hawaii, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami made their money on just this trade.

11. Customs and Immigration - International flights would include a good hour of concerted paperwork effort at the end, facilitated by the flight crew who gave out customs forms, immigration forms, inoculation forms, etc. and then counseled people on what to answer, translated terms to people who needed it, handed out and collected back pens, checked your work, etc. Who needs IFE when you can enable government bureaucracy?

12. Single city, multiple airports - There were many world cities of note that possessed International airports and Domestic Airports, and if your itinerary included this arrangement, you would land in the INT and take a taxi to the DOM airport or vice versa. This was particularly fun in Asian cities when the taxi ride could be tens of miles in the middle of the night in Bombay or Jakarta or Bangkok, for instance, adding a certain zest of the exotic to your three-day journey to your ultimate destination while jet-lagged, exhausted, possibly sick, etc.

13. Porters - The airports of the 80s had many, many porters to haul your non-wheeled luggage from the curb to check-in or baggage claim to taxi for you. I recall Pittsburgh in particular as having friendly, muscly porters ready RIGHT NOW and RIGHT THERE to help you.
You forgot to mention possibly the most important difference, the seating. Actually, starting in 1959 when the first B707 came on stream, the seating on all aircraft was humane. You had plenty of leg room and the seats were comfortable. Economy was more like business class than it was like what we have today which is cattle car personified unless you are border line wealthy and can afford business class.
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 2:05 pm
  #30  
 
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I think domestically, well I guess I need to correct that to domestic narrow-body (since you HAD domestic wide body service!) the seats themselves were not wider - dc-9s were always 2-3, 727 and 737s were always 3-3. The difference was that it was so rare to have someone in the middle seat that you essentially had more room. They definitely did have more legroom, though.
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