Scoop

Looking at these photos its kind of sad how much our industry has changed over the years.


50 Photos From Air Travel’s Glory Years | Vacations.com


Scoop

acl65pilot

Man that is a blast from the past. Makes what we have now seem like a joke!

Dirtdiver

Sad thing is, most of those girls are still flying.

acl65pilot

Um, yep!





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rvr350

I notice in each pix, all the chicks are all wearing very fashionable headwear. I wonder if we can make our current rank and file FA to wear hats??

Ottopilot

We can't even get the pilots to wear hats!

Note how many male flight attendants there were.

JungleBus

While I wasn't alive in the glory years (when, incidentally, we lost multiple hulls & crews to fatal accidents each and every year), I can't wonder if there isn't a little bit of nostalgic revisionism going on here. Most of those pictures are from the ads of the day and surely represented the very best of what those airlines offered. If you're going to make a fair comparison, it'd have to be with the "ad girls" of today, not Helga waddling down the aisle and croaking at people to sit down and shut up. A fair comparison would be to, say, "Deltalina" (Katharine Lee of Delta), and she holds pretty well compared to the girls in the pictures, I'd say!

Which isn't to say the average glory years FA wasn't younger & hotter than today's average FA - I know that's true. I'm just saying looking at yesterday's ads isn't exactly proof of that.

Besides the increased safety over the glory years, I'm very glad we no longer smoke on airplanes. In most other respects...yeah, someone needs to build a time machine!

Scoop

Jungle,
I was not referring to the FAs in particular - although they were a big part of it. I was referring mainly to the "flying experience." Flying was mostly a special occasion back then - not just a bus in the sky. But I guess the consumer got what they wanted - cheap airfare.

I don't know what the accident rate has to do with this. Yes it was more dangerous than today, so was driving across town, and having surgery and most
occupations

Scoop

PS - I agree that is nostalgic but I don't see any revisionism.

zander

Great bit of nostalgia-flying on PSA as a kid, that started my interest in flying!
Before PC was PC, and people had a sense of humor!!

Dash8widget

Funny, I was about to say the same thing. I flew PSA many, many times as a kid growing up in SAN. On most of those flights I was a UM and those FA's always took good care of me. Ah, the good old days