Bruce McCall: What is faux nostalgia?
http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_mccal...nostalgia.html

"The achingly sentimental yearning for times that never happened."

There's certainly merit to the notion that some aspects of commercial aviation were better. Airports and planes were far less crowded. No security lines. Stewardesses selected based on attractiveness (whether that one was better depends on one's orientation and perspective).

But the reality of the numbers is that air travel used to be much like long distance calling: something middle America could afford to use only sparingly, if at all.