How flying got so bad (or did it?)

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We often hear that air travel is worse than it's ever been. Gone are the days when airplanes touted piano bars and meat carving stations — or even free meals. Instead we're crammed into tiny seats and fighting for overhead space.

How did we get here? Most of the inconveniences we think about when we fly can be traced back to the period of time just after the federal government deregulated the airlines.

When commercial air travel took off in the 1940s, the government regulated how many national airlines were allowed to exist, where they were allowed to fly, and how much they could charge for tickets. But the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 swept all these restrictions aside – and stopped providing subsidies for the air carriers. Airlines had to compete on ticket prices. That competition led to a more bare-bones flying experience, but it also made air travel a lot more affordable.

In this episode, we trace the evolution of air travel over the past century to discover whether flying really is worse today — or if it's actually better than ever. We'll board a plane from the "golden age" of air travel, hear the history of one of the original budget airlines and meet feuding airline CEOs. Along the way, we'll see how economic forces have shaped the airline industry into what it is today, and what role we, as consumers, have played.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from NPR sponsor Morgan Stanley with their podcast
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0:12.2	experienced financial advisors.
0:15.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:20.0	There is this thing that you hear all the time that flying used to be so much better than it is now.
0:27.0	Right, like, yeah, you got food, the seats were bigger, like I know all this, but come on, was it was really that fancy and then we heard about a
0:35.0	place where we could see for ourselves what it could have been like.
0:39.6	The exhibit here is what it was like to fly.
0:42.8	We met up with Bob van der Linden, a longtime curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
0:48.8	And he's showing us an exhibit from the 50s and 60s,
0:52.3	from what some people call the golden age of travel.
0:55.2	And the real star of this exhibit is a massive chunk of a decommissioned American Airlines plane
1:00.8	from that time period. So are we, are we allowed to like go on this thing?
1:06.0	Yes you can.
1:07.0	Oh, I thought we were just going to go right next to that.
1:09.0	Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going to make this fun for you.
1:12.0	Bob walks us up some stairs through a door and oh my goodness.
1:17.0	Look at all the wood paneling. Well it's very yes. Oh my. Wow.
1:23.2	A few things really stand out to us.
1:25.5	Like the windows are huge.
1:28.4	And they're covered by these cloth embroidered curtains.
	...

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