Anyone here ever flown commercial prior to 1971?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I understand. The other gets air sick, right? Can’t fly with my father for the same reason.

Pretty much until 2002 or so. Early that year was the last time I went to the airline counter at the airport and purchased a paper ticket (with a personal check even! - though you definitely needed an ID for that). And still met people at their gate as they were getting off, albeit through the metal detectors and bags through X-ray.

Though by that point, TSA was doing ‘random’ spot checks, and that was as much a joy then as it is now. And then the other 9/11 (and subsequent) measures started kicking into high gear not long after - taking off the shoes, needing a boarding pass to get to the boarding areas, more invasive screening, etc.

22

I did it in the 80s. And I was 25! We had like a two hour(!) delay for takeoff, so we sat at the end of the runway, twiddling our thumbs. They let anybody that wanted to go up and see the flight deck. I wasn’t the only adult to do so.

I know the 80s and 90s seem like the same ancient history that the 60s seem to me, but we still got real food even that late.

The best time was whenever smoking finally got banned on flights! “Rows 30-43 are smoking” doesn’t mean much when you are in row 29.

Speaking of Airplane!, I liked the joke that Ted got a “smoking” ticket, considering he never smoked in the movie at all.

Prior to 9/11 I usually got pulled aside for additional scrutiny. They’d go through my carry on. I guess I looked swarthy enough to ping their radar.

23

Before 2019. I have’t been to Asia since before COVID. Internal flights between Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, and Guilin.

ETA: just checked–2011.

24

That was always my experience at Heathrow when I was young and didn’t have Global Entry.

25

I don’t remember flights in the 50s when I was a baby. I flew in 1972 and I didn’t notice much security added since seeing my father off on a number of flights in the years beforehand.

Even in 1979 I took my father to a flight where everybody had to walk through a metal detector to get to the gate area. I got the impression that a metal detector was the only thing used for carry on baggage, though maybe I’ve forgotten a conveyor and X-ray system.

In the years after that I flew often prior to 9/11. In one case at one of the NYC airports there was some construction going on in the gate area and only ticketed passengers were allowed to go through security to the gate area. I got some asshole in trouble who walked around the security booth while no one was looking. He did that because there was open space next to the booth and airline, airport, and security personnel were going in and out that way while a pair of guys checked IDs. Then those guys just walked away leaving the pathway open. Someone in a suit noticed shortly after came over and made a fuss about that open path around the security gate, told someone to block it off. As he tried to get things in order he asked a couple of people if they’d been through security and I pointed out the asshole who snuck past before. I was going on that plane, I didn’t want anybody on it who hadn’t been checked, plus I was pissed in general at the delay due more to the security people being lax than him.

I left lots of pocket knives in security. They would be in my pocket, briefcase, or computer bag normally and I forgot to leave them home or check them, and didn’t I did start buying cheap knives though. They never complained about all the other tools I’d carry with me, screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, wire cutters, all the usual stuff you might use to build a bomb on a plane but those things weren’t on the list.

I was carrying a portable computer early on in that game, and everything from 9-track tapes to floppy disks that I didn’t want put through the machines. At some point they were asking me to turn on the computer. If the screen lit up they said fine because they had no idea what they were looking at, but it didn’t explode right then and there so it was less likely to be a bomb than a computer that wasn’t turned on.

For a while I was also a technology smuggler, and started checking important items in luggage to avoid handling by security. I did like the idea they were focused much more on finding weapons and bombs than asking about the items in my luggage.

Then 9/11. I didn’t fly again for at least 10 years, and rarely since. I was tired of traveling anyway, and with all the added trouble I’m not eager to fly anywhere anymore. Probably will later this year for a trip just out of range for my driving patience.

26

San Francisco to San Diego, 1967.
San Diego to San Francisco, 1969. Both flights about as easy as getting on a bus.

One mildly interesting note: while waiting in the departures area for the 1967 flight, we noticed Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, and Greg Morris waiting for a different flight. About 50 feet away from us, no barricades or personal bodyguards, but although several of us were aware of them nobody bothered them. No autographs, “I’m your biggest fan” - anyone could easily have walked over to pester them but everybody left them alone.

27

Yeah, I remember seeing people off at the airport and walking right up to their gate. Hanging out with them until they got on the plane and watch the plane take off from the windows. In high school, one of my “gang’s” hang out places was LAX (we lived really close). We’d run around and hang out and nobody harassed us.

My first flight was in 1952 when I was a baby and don’t remember anything obviously. But the few times I flew after that I can remember checking my luggage and just walking up to the gate. I know there were some metal detectors/xray equipment at some point in time, but they weren’t much of a big deal. No searches. Also, since I always flew out of LAX, I always got on via the jetway. I didn’t got outside and board a plane using the “big stairs” until I flew out of Presque Isle ME and Hartford CN in my 30s or 40s.

28

Yes, this, though I got my pin from the pilot as we were getting off the plane, if I recall correctly.

There were ashtrays in the armrests.

29

Yep. My first flight was in '67 (delayed a week because both airports were closed due to a blzzard) as an unaccompanied minor. Don’t remember much about the flight itself; can’t even tell you if I used a jetway or the stairs. My main memory is visiting the cockpit and being given a set of plastic “pilot’s wings” by the pilot.

30

My mother, now deceased, wrote some of her memories about air travel in the early 1970s. One line in particular was where she complained about the food: “Not cheesecake again!” after a full meal.

31

Heck, I did this when meeting a friend who was arriving on a plane at O’Hare, a couple of weeks prior to 9/11.

32

My first flight was as a 15-year-old in 1968, flying from Salt Lake to Denver with my cousin who was the same age. His parents took us to the airport, his Dad bought our tickets at the counter, we each checked our small bags, and then we waited at the gate with my aunt and uncle until it was time to board. After an uneventful hour-long flight, my brother was waiting at the gate in Denver when we landed, we got our bags from the luggage carousel, and left. Easy-peasy.

33

I’ve been flying commercial out of SoCal since I was a babe in arms, which puts us back in the mid-50s. This was back in the day when you could take a scheduled helicopter flight from the Inland Empire to LAX, then catch your flight to wherever. This included various trips to Europe when the biggest decision was whether to give Franco’s Spain a pass or not. At that time Eastern Europe was off-limits, which wasn’t much of a loss. Warsaw Pact countries were dreary in those days.

34

Your description, and those of others, covers it pretty well. There was no concept of “security” at all, either in the formal sense of security screening or about airlines caring about any of the nitpicky stuff they harass you about today. I remember once carrying a large Sony tape recorder with detachable speakers on board, which was too large to stow anywhere. Nobody cared. I ended up carrying it on my lap, which would never be allowed today. Nobody cared.

In those days fares were fixed and regulated, but some airlines had “youth fares” where if you were under a certain age (maybe 25?) you could fly standby for half fare. This worked really well for me because planes were rarely full.

As late as the late 90s my son visited the cockpit several times. On one occasion he sat himself down on the floor behind the pilots and stayed there for a good long time. A flight attendant thought it was so cute that she invited the rest of us up to have a look, so at one point the entire family was gawking in the cockpit. It was 9/11 that put an end to that.

Definitely the good old days. It was common to dress well when flying, and nobody ever heard of “disruptive passengers”. Flying mostly sucks today, maybe a little less so for frequent flyers with access to lounges and flying first or business class.

As for jet bridges, even in my day major airports already had them. Some smaller airports of course did not, and some don’t even today.

35

Fixed, regulated, and expensive. In today’s money, a round trip from New York to LA was about $4,000.

I assume that those of you who have memories of flying before 1971 came from fairly well-off families. Upper middle class at least. In 1971 I was in the lower classes, and I didn’t know anyone who had ever flown commercial. It was a rich person thing. My mom didn’t get her first airplane flight until we took her on a trip to Florida in 1992.

This isn’t irrelevant, as it explains much about how people were treated in airports and on planes before the deregulation era. Upper class people paying $4,000 per ticket can be expected to dress well and not be a terror on the flight. A family of five working class people on a $99 flight to Disneyland? Not so much.

Oh, they were the good old days for the well off. For everyone else, taking a holiday meant packing the kids into a car or bus and driving for days. I got my initial love of astronomy lying on the ‘hat shelf’ of a 1967 Impala for 9 hours at a time, staring at the stars, starting when I was four years old, as my grandparents took us on our annual camping trip. Driving vacations were normal for the mid to lower middle classes before airline deregulation, if they could afford to go anywhere at all.

I don’t know how bad cigarette smoke was on airplanes in that era, but I can tell you that a greyhound full of working class people was a living hell for people who didn’t smoke, like me.

If you are mid to lower middle class, the days just before 9/11 were the golden days of commercial aviation, because that’s when it was most affordable with the least amount of hassle.

36

Yeah, I don’t think that changed until after 9/11.

You waited with whoever you’d taken to the airport, as I recall it, partly just to keep them company and partly maybe to have a little more time with them if they were going on a long trip or had only been visiting you briefly; but also just in case their flight was massively delayed or cancelled at the last minute, in which case they might need a ride somewhere, including possibly back home. Didn’t happen often, but was considered possible.

Coming back to this:

If you go back to the mid-60’s or earlier, by modern standards everybody “dressed up” to go anywhere at all. My mother and I, and my sisters, put on skirts or dresses to go to the grocery store. My father, who hated ties, put on a tie and jacket to do errands. All of us ditto to go out to dinner, even at a diner. We didn’t think of it as being “dressed up”; “dressed up” was a whole other level. It was just what you wore whenever doing anything other than hanging around the house, playing sports, doing some types of manual labor, or going on a picnic.

By 1969 that was breaking down; faster in some places than others. It probably broke down a bit later for air travel, which was relatively expensive, than it did for doing the grocery shopping.

37

Phoenix Sky harbor Terminal 1 existed from 1952-1991. You could park, walk less than going to a supermarket, buy a ticket, and walk out the back onto the plane.


The few times I got to fly out of it, I felt spoiled! No 5 mile moving walkways, no tram trains. It was more like a bus depot.

Yes, I know Sky harbor serves a bit more people now than then.

38

We were probably middle- to upper-middle class, in the '60s and '70s, but we, as a family, never flew for vacations.

My parents both flew a lot, for work, during that era: my mother was a stewardess for United from 1960 to 1963 (she either quit, or was forced to retire, when they got married); my dad sold newspaper printing presses, and flew to visit clients all the time, until he changed careers in 1974.

The first time I was on a commercial flight was when I was 3 months old, when we moved from California to Illinois; i didn’t take another commercial flight until ~1986, at age 21-ish, years after deregulation. All of the vacations which my family took when I was a kid were road trips, in the car.

39

Yeah, that sounds about right. Deregulation may have been terrible for the rich because they then had to mix with Hoi Polloi, but for the rest of us, deregulation opened up commercial aviation as an option that did not exist before. In the meantime, business travelers flew a lot, and still do.

40

I don’t actually remember us ever taking vacations, as such. We went to visit people sometimes, or my parents went without us. People came to visit us, and stayed a day or two or a week or three. We went to New York City for a couple of days at a time; we would stay with friends of my parents, go out to dinner, maybe go to the theater or to a movie not available at home. But the kind of thing often called a vacation, at which the family took a week or more and stayed at the beach some significant distance away, or went to Disneyland or to some other attraction – I don’t remember us doing that.

When we went to NYCity we drove some distance to the train station, then left the car there and took the train. When I went to boarding school in Maine for a while, I took the train from the station in Poughkeepsie, changing at Grand Central to another train as far as Boston, and then was picked up by a bus – I think the bus was chartered by the school, because I don’t think a train went near them and a number of students wound up taking one train or another as far as Boston. When I went to college, I took the train.

Planes were for travelling really long distances; or were for people who had to get somewhere in a hurry (and the “somewhere” was near an airport).