Originally Posted by
aerosexual
Hopefully this is the right place to post. I hear people deplore current air travel and I can't say I blame them. 9/11 shook the American psyche and upended American air travel and by proxy, the world's. I wasn't even born in the 80s so my perception of that time period is mostly informed from snippets of Home Alone and Less Than Zero. Yes, really. I've done some googling on my part but did not find much so where better to turn to than here? To those who remember "the good old days," how was it different? From frequent flyer miles to smoking to in flight meals to flight attendants...what was it like?
I took my first flight in 1988, BA Club World from LHR to JFK. It was 2-3-2, no flat beds, no pods; arguably more similar to today's WTP than to today's Club World.
The smoking situation was horrible. Flew United LAX to Sydney in First in 1991 and there was one passenger in the whole First cabin who smoked and ruined it for the rest of us. Simply mind-boggling that this was permitted, and horrible for the FAs. And then there was the perennial problem of smoke drifting between cabins. And don't get me started on Iberia's genius concept of designating one
side of the plane as the smoking section!