| |
| ▲ | WalterBright 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | If you were right, the airlines would be highly profitable. They aren't. Where the gains went are lower ticket prices. | |
| ▲ | triceratops 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair it is a better passenger experience at that price point. | | |
| ▲ | bitmasher9 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I once saw a receipt for a cross-country train ride in the late 1950s and was shocked at the price. It was significantly slower and more expensive than a similar plane ticket today. | | |
| ▲ | brailsafe 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That tends to be true now as well for a variety of reasons. I'd be more interested in the cost then between both modes of travel. | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, in the USA Amtrak tends to be quite a bit more expensive than the equivalent trip by air. And far slower. Maybe excluding some of the east coast commuter routes. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | dukeyukey 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Being able to fly at all is a much better passenger experience than not having that choice in the first place. And I'll bet that flying first class today is far better than 50 years ago. | | |
| ▲ | onlypassingthru 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Would that be in one of the smoking or non-smoking seats in first class? Amazing how the smoke knew where to stay back then. | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >And I'll bet that flying first class today is far better than 50 years ago. I wasn't flying first class 50 years ago, but everything I can see now leads me to believe that this isn't even slightly true. There might be a high def flatscreen in front of me in first class today, but I'm not getting more attention than someone would've gotten back then, I'm not in a less crowded airport while I'm boarding, and the security mess is more demeaning than ever. The only reason that people aren't rioting for all the changes is that no one even remembers how good it used to be. | | |
| ▲ | professoretc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you want to know what flying first-class 50 years ago was like (and you live in southern California, and you have money to burn) you can try the Panam Experience (https://panamexperience.com/). It's a replica of a Panam 747, together with a "crew" in period-correct costumes, that tries to recreate the entire experience of flying in the 1950s. (Bearing in mind that the plane is a replica, located on a soundstage.) | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That sounds a bit weird, the 747 didn't enter commercial service until 1970. A 1950s flight experience would have been on something with piston engines and propellors, like a DC-6 or a Super Constellation. Noisy, turbulent, and not particularly safe by modern standards. | | |
| ▲ | OroPla 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That's because the 1950s were seventy years ago, not fifty, which only brings you back to the 1970s. |
|
| |
| ▲ | leonidasrup 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Economy are seats getting smaller, but also modern airplanes are much fuel efficient. "Between 1950 and 2018, efficiency per passenger grew from 0.4 to 8.2 RPK per kg of CO2" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft https://www.explore.com/1762212/reason-why-plane-experience-... | |
| ▲ | a34729t 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well that and the people who make decisions largely don't fly peasant. Remember that the US air force is mostly executive transport. The easiest way to make conditions get better is to make sure the people in charge have to use things, be it busses, bike lanes, trains, airports, public bathrooms, parks with bums, etc. Otherwise it always hits the middle and lower class to absorb it. | |
| ▲ | triceratops 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > no one even remembers how good it used to be. Because not that many people even used to fly. Because it cost a lot more. |
|
|
|
