Originally Posted by UNITED959
Supersonic transport - gone.
Inflight Internet - adiós.
Inflight Telephone Service - byebye. Now, the meals and declining service levels due to financial constraints aside, are we losing progress and achievement when viewing what air travel once was, to what it is now?
With over a half century of air travel, at some points at almost "road warrior" frequency, I feel qualified to comment....
No.
Air carriers has adjusted to quality and types of service for which the largest portion of the traveling public is willing to pay. Even the wealthy and celebrities are not numerous enough to fill premium cabins, and large chunks of "high-priced" seats are filled with "up-graded" payers of economy fares. The white gloves, high heels and champagne of the 50s and 60s has given way to a harsher reality, that air travel is not driven by image and romance, but by the hard, cold bums of folks who work for or are personally bean conters and who fill the seats.
There's no mystery to travel decisions for the vast majority of travelers (or the folks who send them), simply the best, most convenient and cost effective method of getting from here to there, "frosted" occasionally with the benefit of having done it so often that one or more of the airlines desires your repeat patronage and throws in minor incentives to induce your return.
Going backwards? Compare the percentage of the US or the world's poipulations which regularly (or had at all) traveled by air in 1960 and in 2006....