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4k0hz 2 hours ago

Airlines were heavily regulated in the US and essentially operated as government contractors until 1978 [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Aeronautics_Board

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tt24 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah and it was an absurdly expensive activity limited to rich people

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hedora 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

As I understand it, everything about the industry was better back then too.

Case in point: Old Perry Mason shows where characters regularly drive to the airport, pay for a ticket and get on a plane. Flying was actually faster than driving back then, even when measured by time between deciding to leave and arriving at destination!

(Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more. Whatever. Figure in the price for camping in the airport for 4-5 hours, and then tell me the current system is cheaper!)

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tt24 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It would be prohibitively expensive for poor people to fly. I understand why you wouldn’t care about that, but some people are poor and still need to fly if you can believe it.

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missedthecue 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

"Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more"

Tickets used to cost 4-8x what they cost now, depending on route. It wasn't a couple percent extra. A lot of what made flying seem like such a glamorous activity was that everyone but the upper classes was excluded.

An economy class round trip from the US to Japan in the 1970s with Pan-Am was $8,900 in 2026 dollars. About $15,000 if you flew first class.

	▲	Conan_Kudo 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And for comparison, today you can do an economy round-trip flight with Delta Air Lines for roughly $1.6k (SEA-HND). A Delta One flight is roughly $8.5k. That's the apples-to-apples comparison. Deregulation also allowed international carriers to sell to us too. An ANA round-trip on economy class is a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Their business class is similarly cheaper than Delta One. Air travel is so much cheaper than it was back then that it is affordable for most people to take one international trip a year if they really want to. Even to exotic places in Asia or Southern Europe.