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I am so old I can remember flying BOAC back home from England and the "stewardesses" passing out individual cigarettes from silver trays to those passengers that wanted to smoke. I felt like a bigshot!We're old enough to remember when air travel was a BFD. My first commercial flight, via Northwest Orient Airlines, came in my 13th year. (I had flown in light aircraft, piloted by my stepfather.) I recall people getting gussied up for the flight and expensive EVERYTHING in the passenger terminals. Even the vending machines charged twice what you could get the goodies for at the gas station half a mile away.
Air travel was for the well-to-do and those whose employers were picking up the tab. Deregulation of the industry killed many of the carriers and diminished service to some locales, but it's been an overall boon to the public. We moan about being herded like cattle at the airports and packed in like sardines aboard the planes, but dang, you can fly from coast to coast for what a not-rich person sees for a day's efforts. For that, I don't expect white glove service.