Why the “Golden Age of Travel” Is Now

As the CEO of Ovation Travel Group, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of the “Golden Age of Travel.” Loosely defined as the 1950s and 1960s, I’ve heard a lot of people wax poetic about the tremendous amounts of legroom, abundant amounts of quality food and alcohol, the pleasant service, ease of boarding and the overall excitement of the flight itself.

While I was a bit too young to experience and appreciate the joys of flying during that time, I have a lot of that same nostalgia when it comes to the Concorde, which I was lucky enough to fly on twice.  Because of the amount of “high touch” business travel for which my company is known, Ovation was among the largest sellers of Concorde tickets before they stopped flying in 2003. I’ve always felt we took a step backward when we discontinued supersonic travel and hoped it could be brought back. To me, it was amazing that you could get from New York to Paris in just 3 hours; you’d be sitting there eating caviar and sipping champagne and hear that little ‘pop’ when you broke the sound barrier. Besides the service, it was simply a technological marvel. Having said that, I do understand that there were real issues that led to its discontinuation (e.g., noise, pollution and declining passengers, particularly after the Air France Flight 4590 crash in 2000) highlighted by questions about the airplane’s safety.

This brings me back to the idea of the “Golden Age of Travel.” Sure, some of it was wonderful and arguably better than what we have now. But there were other aspects of flying during that time that are the equivalent of wearing rose-colored glasses. They may be remembered as beautiful; but, you find that when you take the glasses off, the reality wasn’t always quite as colorful.

To be sure, large parts of the flying experience in the 1950s and 1960s were pretty enviable. Flight attendants were known as “hostesses” and were expected to behave as if they were curating a pleasant and entertaining experience for “guests.” You were not charged for food, and in fact, full meals were expected. In-flight chefs served everything from lobster to beef fillets, which were eaten with actual silverware and flatware no less. And, lest you get thirsty, in-flight sommeliers were often on hand to help you choose whatever beverage you wanted, and some planes were even outfitted with wet bars. The average amount of legroom was between 3 and 6 inches more than what it is now, and some planes even included lounge areas with swivel chairs and tables. If you were a smoker, that wasn’t a problem either, and the process of going through security checkpoints was pretty much non-existent compared to what happens today. In many ways, the atmosphere seemed more akin to a party than just a plane flight, and perhaps it was.

But, with the exception of the food and the legroom, the average person today might not be ok with all of the above. To begin with, “hostesses” could only be women, with strict rules regarding physical appearance and weight limits, and the pre-requisite that they not be married. Further, nobody wants to be in an enclosed space with a lot of cigarette smoke, irrespective of the health issues that may come with smoking. And while it might seem fun to have access to as many free, alcoholic drinks as you want, in-flight drinking can lead to faster intoxication and dehydrate you faster than normal, due to the decreased oxygen and pressurized environment. You can also become more susceptible to motion sickness, not to mention the potential behavioral issues. And on a lesser note, the biggest form of in-flight entertainment during that time (besides drinking) was writing postcards, which is a far cry from the movies, Kindles and laptops you see on today’s flights.

And then there was the cost of the service and amenities. Many of these plane flights did not have multiple seat classes (e.g., business and economy), which meant that while everyone enjoyed all of the amenities described above, everyone also had to pay for it, and they had to pay a lot. I like to think of it as similar to when TV first started. People forget how much a good television cost when they became commercially available and what it meant to have one as a status symbol. As exciting as the first TVs were, they were also relatively much more expensive and far less impressive than the modern television; think about how much it has changed over the decades compared to now. The same is really true with flying. In 1955, a ticket from Boston to Los Angeles cost $106 on TWA ($896 adjusted for inflation). Plus, that price was for a one-way ticket, not round trip, and the journey also took 12 hours. To put things into further perspective, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the average annual earnings in 1957 for full time workers was $4713 for men and $3008 for women. Similarly, while airplanes were not legally segregated during that time period, airports often were, a fact which made the reality of a desegregated airplane a moot point. So, if you were flying during that period, chances are you were making more than an average salary, and thanks to income distribution and social and economic opportunity, you were more likely to be able to access and afford it if you were male and white, which obviously leaves out a lot of people.

Perhaps more unsettling than the cost of travel in the 1950s and 1960s was how incredibly unsafe it was compared to today, due to a combination of factors such as mechanical problems, a lack of proper training and a higher propensity for midair collisions. In 1959, for example, there were 40 fatal accidents per one million aircraft departures in the U.S. Today, that number has fallen to roughly 0.1 per million, and what’s more, there hasn’t been a big crash with an American legacy carrier in more than 15 years. And aside from that, infrastructure issues such as lower ceilings and poorly designed seat belts meant that turbulence stood a much higher chance of causing serious injuries to passengers.

When you look at it from the perspective of safety, the issues that many passengers experience today (e.g., long security lines and cramped space) are relatively minor. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t very real aggravations. Today, the industry has very much turned into an a la carte system. Customers only want to pay for what they actually use; they get a lower fare but in exchange they can pay more for a better seat or to check a bag. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby spoke about this recently, noting: “Seat pitch (leg room) has come down […] But seat pitch has come down because that’s what customers voted with their wallets that they wanted. I know everyone would tell you, ‘I would like more seat pitch.’ But the history in the airline industry is every time airlines put more seat pitch on, customers choose the lowest price.”

The bottom line for me is that, despite the perception that we’ve gone backwards as an industry, today feels more like a “Golden Age of Travel” than before. Flying today is extremely safe and attainable to so many more people. The system is customer driven and people can pay for different classes if they want different service. It’s tremendous the way the air transportation system has improved and given people what they want. And speaking of which, supersonic travel may be making a comeback. Boom Technology, a supersonic start-up, announced recently that it had 76 orders for passenger jets that “will be breaking the sound barrier on flights across oceans by 2023.” So perhaps, in a few years, you really can get that rose-tinted view, with or without the glasses.