When Flying Was a Big Deal — And Not in a Good Way

There's a certain kind of person who still gets dressed up to fly. You see them at the gate — pressed shirt, real shoes, the whole thing. Most people quietly judge them and shuffle past in their airport hoodies. But here's the twist: sixty years ago, that dressed-up traveler wasn't being extra. They were just following the rules.

Flying used to be a formal, expensive, and genuinely complicated undertaking. The version of air travel most Americans under 50 have grown up with — cheap fares, instant booking, carry-on chaos — is a relatively recent invention. And the gap between then and now is a lot wider than most people realize.

You Didn't Book a Flight. You Made an Appointment.

In the 1970s, if you wanted to fly somewhere, your first call wasn't to an airline. It was to a travel agent. These were actual offices — storefront businesses staffed by people who had access to the ticketing systems that regular consumers simply couldn't reach. You'd sit across a desk, explain where you wanted to go, and the agent would consult printed schedules and fare charts to figure out your options.

The ticket itself was a physical booklet — multi-page, carbon-copied, and about the size of a small passport. Lose it, and you were in serious trouble. There were no digital backups, no QR codes, no "just pull it up on your phone." That paper booklet was your flight.

And the price on that ticket? Set by the government. Under the Civil Aeronautics Board, which regulated U.S. air travel until 1978, airlines weren't allowed to compete on price. Fares were fixed. A round-trip ticket from New York to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s cost the equivalent of roughly $1,500 in today's money — and that was the standard rate, with no discount option available.

The Airport Was a Different World

Once you actually got to the airport — and you arrived early, because this process took time — the experience was nothing like today's. Security was minimal by modern standards, but check-in was slow and manual. Agents typed information by hand. Boarding passes were stamped, not scanned.

Dress codes, while not always formally enforced, were very much a real social expectation. Airlines actively cultivated an image of glamour. Flight attendants — almost exclusively women in that era, a whole separate conversation — wore uniforms designed by fashion houses. Passengers dressed accordingly. Jeans were considered inappropriate on many carriers. Showing up in sweatpants would have been genuinely shocking.

The cabin itself was more spacious than today's economy class, largely because fewer people were flying. Meals were included, served on real plates with metal cutlery. The whole experience was designed to feel like an event.

Because it was. At those prices, most Americans flew rarely, if ever. In 1970, only about 31% of Americans had ever been on a plane.

Then 1978 Changed Everything

The Airline Deregulation Act, signed by President Carter in October 1978, is one of the most consequential and least celebrated pieces of legislation in American economic history. It eliminated the Civil Aeronautics Board's control over fares and routes, allowing airlines to set their own prices and fly wherever they wanted.

The immediate effect was chaos. Airlines slashed prices to compete. New carriers launched. Some established ones collapsed. But within a few years, the dust settled into something remarkable: air travel became affordable for ordinary Americans.

By the mid-1980s, fares had dropped dramatically. By the 1990s, budget carriers like Southwest were treating flying like a bus service — no frills, low prices, high frequency. The formality evaporated. The travel agent industry began its long, slow decline.

What Flying Looks Like Now

Today, you can book a flight in about 90 seconds from your phone, often for less than the cost of a nice dinner. Budget carriers regularly offer fares under $100 for routes that would have cost ten times that in inflation-adjusted terms fifty years ago. Your boarding pass lives in your Apple Wallet. You can check in 24 hours early from your couch.

About 90% of Americans have now flown at least once. On a busy travel day, the TSA processes over 2.5 million passengers. The airport has become one of the most democratic spaces in American life — a place where a college student on a Spirit Airlines fare and a business executive on a first-class ticket are, at least for a few hours, waiting in the same terminal.

Some things were genuinely lost in that transformation. The meal service. The legroom. The sense that you were doing something special. Plenty of people over 60 will tell you, with some justification, that flying used to be nicer.

But "nicer" was also exclusive. The formality and the glamour came attached to prices that kept most Americans on the ground. What replaced it was something messier, more chaotic, and occasionally infuriating — but also something that made the world a lot more accessible to a lot more people.

So next time you're wedged into a middle seat with a bag of pretzels and a three-hour delay, remember: your grandparents might have envied you just for being there at all.