We’d take weekend trips to visit relatives, but our big vacations were a week to a week-and-a-half long, during the summer My parents were close friends with three other couples (the husbands of which were college classmates and fraternity brothers of my dad), and the four families would vacation together. Most of those vacations were at “state resort parks” in Kentucky, which were essentially state parks that had lodging (hotel rooms and/or cottages). And, all four families drove there.
Air travel in the early years of the “jet age” was indeed expensive and fairly exclusive, but your statements here aren’t really accurate for the years around the 1971 era.
One thing I distinctly remember, because it was an Air Canada route that I flew often around those years, was that the standard, regulated one-way airfare was $35. The Bank of Canada inflation calculator tells me that this is about $265 in today’s dollars. But a quick glance at Air Canada’s “lowest cash fare” offerings for that same route today are currently on the order of about $380.
I’m sure that it probably fell below 1971 levels in constant dollars, but then it rapidly rose again. Air travel today is simultaneously both expensive and obnoxious as hell.
Air Canada might be an exception, being a government carrier at the time. I’m mainly talking about what happened in the U.S.
My first flight was with my mother and my newborn sibling. I was 3. My father had started a new job in another state, they had one car, and my mother had just given birth. No nearby relatives to help. Absolutely not midde class, just not able to engage other options.
My second flight was when I was 19, from the east coast to San Francisco to stay with a friend for a week. The round trip cost $100, for ehich I worked extra and saved all semester. My friend was distant when I arrived and I wound up not eating most meals because she wasn’t feeding me at her place and the one time we went out for a sandwich it was an exorbitant $5, wiping out my budget for the day. Again, not middle class.
ETA: My 3rd air trip was for a year-long job in the middle east. I was told to take the cheapest fare; using a student discount service and the Romanian airline, it was around $500, which was more thsn a month’s pay at the new job.
My family never flew for a vacation, and only vacationed twice anywhere other than visiting a relative. In fact, other than the flight when I was 3, I’ve never flown with any family member other than my wife. Never stayed at a hotel during family travel, or ate at a restaurant. A few years ago, I took a photo from the porch of a Swiss hotel in the hamlet where my parents and I (infant) lived for a year. My mother wrote back to say that they’d only eaten there once, when their relatives visited and bought the meal. Many stories of taking the train to Lucerne once a month to buy a chicken in order to make a fancy meal.
We only took real vacations every five years, and that was to drive to Ohio to visit my mom’s family. Often, we didn’t even stay in motels – we sometimes sleep in the car by the side of the road. Four kids, two parents, and an obese dachshund. We didn’t eat in restaurants either. It was cheap groceries and a “picnic” at a rest stop. My mom said we looked like the Joads (who I didn’t know when I was little).
Kind of off-topic, but a fun memory… at National Airport in DC (long before it was “Reagan” airport), say around 1972 or so, they used to have little trailers in the parking lot, like mini-hotel rooms, where travelers could “freshen up” before or after a flight. My girlfriend and I “freshened up” more than once in one of those little conveniences…
Wanted to avoid smart alecks. A six-year old hamster would be quite something.
I’m married now because of the second hamster incident, but that’s a long story.
We have time. Come on, that’s a story we need to hear.
Around that time there was a student discount card. My fare from Boston to New York on the shuttle was under $10 with it. I don’t remember the flight to Corpus Christi with my roommate in 1970 as being particularly expensive, nor flights I took when I was in grad school and hardly rich.
Flights are definitely cheaper today, but you didn’t have to be wealthy to afford them back then.
In the early 1970s, my brother and I were invited, at the end of the flight, to visit the cockpit, which we declined. Prior to 9/11 my brother also liked to wander various
hallways of National Airport in Washington, DC, which is now nothing more than a fond memory.
Both of my parents were public schoolteachers, yet Mom and I flew all over the place when I was but a lad. Back to Texas a lot for Mom’s relatives and Kansas for summers on the farm for Dad and I. I never thought flying was something “only rich people did.”
I flew regularly between Milwaukee WI and Flint or Detroit MI circa 1965 to 1971 (usually on North Central airlines). Often as an unaccompanied minor, shuttling between my parents and my grandparents. I loved it, I got lots of attention, no security, we’d buy tickets right at the counter, hop on the plane, I’d get special pins and hats from the cabin crew. Nice snacks too.
I wasn’t around then and am Canadian. Was it really Cooper that caused all the airport security?
Anyway, we did go on vacations as a family but they were generally spent camping. I remember my first flight well, taken when I was around eight years old. Although it was an economy ticket:
- The plane had an observation deck.
- We got to go into the cockpit and ask the pilots what all the little controls did.
- The meal served was filet steak and wine was served from big bottles.
- Many people on the flight were wearing suits and ties or formal dresses.
Flew from Idlewild to Hawaii.
No gate security and people could accompany you right to the gate until you boarded. You walked out on the tarmac and went up stairs to the cabin.
The plane had a stopover in San Francisco to refuel; you could get out and stretch your legs.*
We landed in Maui, spent a few days there, then flew to Honolulu on s different model plane - the first one could land, but could not get airborne with the same group because the airport runway was too small.
*I had a serendipitious track record: whenever a plane had a stopover in a city I’d never been to, I’d end up eventually visiting there, sometimes decades later. I didn’t plan it.
No. IMO, it was 9/11.
Not Cooper specifically, there was a period of hijackings in the 1970s that tightened things up a bit. 9/11/2001 just killed off whatever was left of the golden age of commercial aviation.
I flew a few times before there was any security. As others have said, you just went to the gate once you had checked in and received your boarding pass. Your friends/family could accompany you to the gate, if they chose. When boarding began, you went out onto the ramp, and climbed the stairs up into the aircraft.
Meals were served if the flight was long enough, but even on the shorthaul flights, you might get some coffee or a soft drink and a snack of some sort. A good look at what the inflight experience was can be seen in the 1970 movie Airport—people smoking, drinking, meal service. All dressed up, even the kid who asks Dean Martin a question as he passes through the cabin. And the fact that there was no security allowed an important plot point (spoilered because there may be folks who have never seen the film, but want to see the airport and flight experience prior to 1971)
There is a man on board with a bomb in his briefcase, which a security checkpoint would have immediately detected. His plan is to explode the bomb in flight, allowing his wife to collect on the life insurance he bought at the airport prior to takeoff. The bomb explodes, but things don’t quite go according to plan.
They used to have vending machines at the airports, for travellers to purchase insurance. Just in case the plane were to crash, you know.
Instances arose where Americans began to place explosives on planes in order to make a claim. In one, a Denver businesswoman’s son hid explosives in a Christmas present, which detonated on her flight resulting in the death of 39 passengers and 5 crewmembers. He admitted to the FBI that he committed this crime for an insurance payout and later executed.
There was a Lenny Bruce bit from the very early '60s called “Non-sked Airlines” that was based on that very point - which actually had happened. Or so he started the bit.
As for going to the gate - and meeting people at the gate as the got off the plane, true, and more, some airports had observation decks where you could go watch planes take off and land even if you didn’t have a ticket on one.
Going to the gate with travelers and meeting travelers at the gate was a thing into at least the 1980’s, possibly later but there was an interval where I didn’t fly for awhile.
And I’m jealous of ya’ll - I never got a tour of the cockpit or hats or pins or anything fun like that.