Improvements in air travel

[mmcirvin]

Timothy Burke's long gloomy essay about the increasing badness of stuff makes a broad assertion early on:

Still, sometimes things really do get worse by any standard. I don’t think there’s anyone over the age of forty who thinks that airplane travel today is generally a more pleasant experience than it was thirty or more years ago. Maybe planes fly a few more places than they once did, or fly more often, maybe the relative cost of a few fares is lower than it once was, but that’s about it.

I'm over forty, and I disagree. Crowding, legroom and food services have gotten worse, but there are several major, major things about air travel thirty years ago that Burke is forgetting:

1. Smoking.
2. Paper tickets that you could lose or forget to bring to the airport.
3. Smoking.
4. Holding patterns. In those days, you'd typically take off from the source airport with no assurance that there would be an available slot for landing at the far end. The result was that you'd frequently end up trapped in the air circling over the destination airport in a holding stack for hours. Today, it still sometimes happens that you end up trapped in the plane on the tarmac, and from a passenger's perspective that's just as bad. But the most likely outcome of bad traffic conditions where you're going is that you just spend a lot of time in the departure lounge. It's a lot better.
5. Lower-traffic routes once served by slow, vomit-inducing turboprop puddle-jumpers are now served by small regional jets (and, while this is anecdotal on my part, I think it's more likely you'll be able to find a direct flight).
6. Smoking.

I'm not sure it matters much to Burke's larger argument, but I thought it was worth saying.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Also, I think the replacement of travel agents with Web booking sites for routine air travel is a net gain, for all the trouble they can be at times. I remember so often, as late as the 1990s, sitting in a long line at a travel agency while the travel agent poked around on a computer terminal to book flights for people, and thinking I could get what I needed done quickly if only I had access to that terminal. It wasn't long before I effectively did.

[cheryln.livejournal.com]

YES. I remember one trip I took, about fifteen years ago, to attend a friend's wedding. I was flying between two reasonably obscure airports, and so there was one airline that could get me there with only one stop. I wanted to arrive a few days before and stay a few days after the wedding, but was extremely flexible with how many were on either end. But on the phone with the airline, I had to keep prompting, "Well, what if I leave Thursday and come back Tuesday? How much is it if I leave Wednesday and come back Monday? What about Wednesday to Tuesday?" instead of, "My dates are flexible. On what days do I have to fly to get the lowest fare?"

At least I was in compliance with the Saturday-night-stay rules that I don't think exist anymore, either.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing an uncommon joy and elation on my dad's face when he discovered that his Compuserve account gained him access to EaasySabre, the same flight database that travel agents used in their special terminals. Suddenly he could book tickets like a pro, the way travel agents and al other people did-- calling the airline and talking to someone who wasn't incarcerated, giving them the card number of his Visa, which was not from his bank, but from the Visa Corporation (hence the giant VISA logo covering the entire card-- but that was the only VISA there was) and booking the tickets.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I'll admit that modern airport security theater is so outrageously bad that in overall hedonic terms it probably cancels out many of these improvements. But it's simply not the case that there are no places where you can point to significant quality increases.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

The long security lines are pretty much a wash compared to the long lines to get your seat, which are now much faster (if you're checking a bag) or can be bypassed entirely.

Also, airport food is overpriced and not very good, but it used to be just as overpriced and much much worse; high-school cafeteria grade rather than fast-food grade.

[orzelc.livejournal.com]

4: I think waiting on the tarmac is much, much worse than circling in the air, because for whatever reason, they don't run the air conditioning when you're on the tarmac. It gets uncomfortably stuffy within minutes.

But then, I have a very low tolerance for "uncomfortably stuffy," so YMMV. If I'm going to be stuck in a plane, though, I'd rather be at altitude than on the ground, because when it's flying, I can breathe.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The other thing about stacked-up planes was that in that era, I lived right under the stack for Washington Dulles. It may be that the increase in traffic there offsets any benefit from reduced stacking, but I remember hearing the noise of holding jets as a constant background drone in my life.

[kodi]

4. The only time I've sat on the tarmac was after a LAX to DFW flight that experienced constant turbulence; we sat for over an hour, but it felt like we were still in flight. I don't think there's anything that would have made that hour suck less.

1, 3, 6. I'm young enough that I can't even imagine what that was like, but I'd give up all the other improvements to keep that one.

As for the security theater in general, I've not yet experienced the backscatter/grope dilemma, nor has anyone that I've dropped off at the airport. The only difference I've experienced between now and 10 years ago is that when I'm dropping someone off, I get to drive home immediately instead of waiting with them at the gate - which I expect is part of why even though the normal x-ray procedure takes slightly longer than it did 10 years ago, the total time I spend in line is generally less. The single longest wait I've ever had in the security line was before 2001, and it was still less than 20 minutes.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The last time I flew I went through what I think was a millimeter-wave scanner. It was on only one security line of several, which made it even more absurd; the rest of my family was on another line and we were late for our plane and I waived my citizen's duty to risk arrest by monkeywrenching the system so I guess I am the frog in the frying pan and when Hitler takes over I guess it is my fault.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember being on a plane in the late '60s, and there was one experience there I didn't have again for 30-some years: disembarking from the plane via the mobile staircase, out in the weather, no matter what the weather is like at the moment. It was rainy, windy, and cold, and I swear one of the planes I took then was an older passenger plane with props instead of jets. The old passenger planes were much noisier than the jets.

Which brings up another bit that guy may have missed: flights were generally shorter and you had to make more connections. That's sort of become the rule again because of security restrictions post 9/11, but for a while there was a golden time of being able to fly non-stop to a number of major cities.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The mobile stairs are still pretty commonly used with small regional jets and commuter terminals. Prop planes aren't unheard of either, though they're disappearing from all but the shortest routes.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I dunno about that-- plenty of turbo-prop-style regional aircraft still fill the need that can't be met with just a multi-hub system alone. Recent trips to Bakersfield CA and Columbia SC are evidence of that-- the latter trip came out of .. was it Houston or DFW? I forget, but both have regionaljet terminals that can serve the dozens of small airports. That said, for nearly every one of those airport, there's a more major aiport within a couple hours' drive where it may just pay to fly to the major and rent a car, fares being as unpredictable as all that.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see now you're referring to regional jets the way I am, they do screw themselves through the air, but they certainly aren't the clod-hoppers of old.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm distinguishing between turbofans (which are what most passenger jets use) and turboprops. Technically both are turbine engines with jet exhaust that also drive a fan, but in the turboprop case the fan is a large propeller outside of the engine body that provides a larger fraction of the thrust, whereas in a turbofan it's coaxial and hidden in a cowl at the front of the engine. Both types are still used on short routes, but in my experience small turbofan jets like the CRJ have replaced slower turboprops on a lot of secondary routes, like, say, Manchester NH to Richmond.

Flying boats?

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

I wish there were more flying boats around these days. Some of the ones in the old days were very luxurious also a zepplin that is not full of explodely.

Re: Flying boats?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There's a shuttle terminal at LaGuardia that used to be the flying-boat terminal, or so the plaques say. It was a genteel form of travel, but I think that was partly because few people could afford it.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty certain fairs are cheaper, overall-- there are no route monopolies (although I suspect they were mostly gone by the time of '81, which is the reference point offered above-- thanks to Carter and Reagan.

Certainly back in the day, we didn't get nickeled and dimed by luggage charges, food charges, etc., and certainly the dress-code has relaxed. Flying across country was long enough when I was 7. Doing it in Sunday Clothes was worse, still. Now, nobody bats an eye if you fly wearing something that might otherwise be workout clothing or pajamas.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

fairs? No, way more expensive. Fares, though. Cheaper.

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

How much of this is because plane travel is worse and how much of it is because Burke is now over forty?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I don't want to pick on Burke too much; his blog was where I learned the phrase "declension narrative" (a story of history as decline from a Golden Age), and he's inherently suspicious of them. Various things going on lately have gotten him down.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

You certainly cannot overstate the importance of the smoking ban. Unlike in other situations where you can be trapped with a bunch of toxic smokers' second-hand dross, on an airplane there's no way to escape it. Yes, it was bad everywhere, restaurants, schools, doctors' offices (oh, the irony), but airplanes are the worst. At least on other forms of public transportation, you can usually open a window, and/or the duration of the ride is short enough to escape relatively unscathed.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I suspect I mentally edited out low-level smoke smell in most places back then. Today, I find the smell overbearing wherever anyone's been smoking, and at the time it was just everywhere. Both of my parents used to smoke, and in the Seventies they sometimes smoked in the house, though I think they eventually decided to ban that.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

To me it's always overbearing. I know some people who grew up with it and it is always overbearing. I suppose memory can soften the edges.