[HN Gopher] Remembering the Golden Age of Airline Food
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Remembering the Golden Age of Airline Food
Author : prismatic
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-05-10 15:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| scionthefly wrote:
| When it's an option, fly Lufthansa. At least in their
| transatlantic flights, the food was excellent even though I was
| in cramped economy class. As I recall I had a type of beef stew,
| potatoes and carrots, salad, bread rolls, butter, and a nice ice
| cream for dessert.
|
| On domestic flights, I miss Southwest Airlines pre-9/11 snack
| packs. They had cheese, crackers, cookies, and fruit like apple
| sauce. Nice pick-me-up in the middle of a three hour flight.
| blitzar wrote:
| The golden age they refer to is a very brief period of time in a
| now long history of flight. From almost every possible
| perspective, flying domestically within the US has more in common
| with taking a bus than with international aviation.
| sbbr wrote:
| I can live without food and flight entertainment if they fly me
| Europe to US for 400 euro or Europe to Japan for 600.
| Animats wrote:
| Air Hollywood, which is a film set rental company, offers the Pan
| Am Experience.[1] For about $300, you get to sit in a 747 cabin
| on the ground and have the experience of a Pan Am dinner from the
| 1960s.
|
| Even at the low end, air travel was impressive. PSA was a low-
| cost airline. SJC to LAX, every hour, for about $14, with a 59
| minute flight time. The process was very simple. Drive up to
| terminal. Park. Walk up to cash register. Pay. The register
| receipt was the boarding pass. A 727 pulls up and lowers the rear
| stairs. People get off. After a few minutes, the person who ran
| the cash register leads everyone waiting out to the plane, and
| they climb the stairs. Stairs retract, and plane takes off. PSA
| stewardess graduation pictures from 1974.[2]
|
| [1] https://airhollywood.com/events/pan-am-experience/
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090121124408/http://www.jetpsa...
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| > stewardess graduation pictures
|
| While PSA operated within a single state, there were no
| training requirements for its flight attendants. They were
| recruited by a lucky fellow who walked up and down the beach on
| weekends making offers. The recruits could be working on actual
| flights as soon as the following Monday. The airline had a
| discount flight from LA to SF around midnight on Friday night
| that was a couple of dollars less than the standard fare you
| mention. And the passengers on that flight could fly assured
| that the flight attendants had a week's experience.
| litoE wrote:
| I remember flying PSA between Oakland and LAX in 1972. $16 each
| way and you could pay the flight attendant after boarding. The
| "meal" was a choice of "coffee, tea, punch or boullion".
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| It probably actually tastes good too. Iirc, taste buds don't
| work so well at altitude so all that fancy food prep was wasted
| on the passengers of yore. Might be worth revisiting on the
| 787s though since those are pressurized to 1km? Or something
| pluijzer wrote:
| That boarding process seems so great. Right now literally
| prefer a 12 hour drive to a one hour flight. The whole process
| is exhausting and stressful.
| q87b wrote:
| It's probably better for our habitable ecosystem though so in
| a backwards way anything that makes plane travel less of a
| convenient no-brainer is good.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I preferred the private Amtrak compartment. Overnight trip,
| bring your own snacks and beverage. Eat a meal or two with
| other people in the dining car. Read a book and be left alone
| in your room. Best part was being able to ride a bicycle
| right to the station and pack it my way. No luggage or
| boarding anxiety. Arrive and depart from the city or town
| center. After you pay the airline's extra luggage fees for a
| bicycle, the cost is comparable.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yep. Departing from, and arriving to, the city center
| rather than have to commute to and from the airport is
| definitely a killer feature.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's another reminder that terrorists have won, and have
| ruined the flight experience for everyone. You basically get
| searched in order to board. Nobody agrees to have even the
| slightest risk of a a plane to be hijacked in exchange of not
| having all of these security measures (which, in a
| significant part, are a security theater).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Maybe the fear-mongerers have won instead?
|
| There are lots of public places/events that don't require
| any searches/background checks and where a bomb would yield
| a significant number of casualties and terror to blowing up
| a regional jet, yet we don't seem to be having explosions
| every other day.
|
| Maybe the terrorist threat is overblown and is merely kept
| around as a convenient excuse for more
| surveillance/repression?
| hoseja wrote:
| The terrorists were explicitly inducing the fearmonger
| response, no?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't obligate us to indulge them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's a substantial jobs program as well, making it an
| additional amount sticky.
| skyyler wrote:
| "fearmonger" and "terrorist" have strikingly similar
| definitions.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| The difference is that aircraft can be hijacked and used
| as giant, difficult to intercept (Because they can act
| normally until the last minute, where you have to notice,
| verify, get clearance, and then destroy it) cruise
| missiles.
|
| And those aircraft can impact anything that's somewhat
| close to a flight path, even things with ordinarily good
| security. They can even hit other countries - so airport
| security is something everyone needs to do to satisfy the
| minimum acceptable security of every country they fly
| remotely close to, instead of something where the country
| can make it's own decision on the tradeoffs.
| quacked wrote:
| > prefer a 12 hour drive to a one hour flight
|
| I'm right there with you. I'd go as far as 14 hour drive
| before I start thinking I should fly instead.
|
| It wasn't always like this, flying was bearable even as far
| back as 2002-2008 even counting the post-9/11 stuff. I think
| a most of it has to do with cost-cutting. The second they
| find an efficiency they cut staff and hire cheaper workers.
| The whole culture around airports, even expensive ones, has
| started to resemble bus stations.
| toadi wrote:
| Exactly I live 600km from the capital. 1 hour flight. Still
| takes me more then half a day to get to my destination.
|
| I ride my motorcycle most of the times 6 hours door to door.
| With pit stops on the way. Trains are slow here but I take
| the sleep train. Get on train 10pm go to sleep and arrive at
| 5am in the morning :)
|
| I prefer these latter 2 over flying.
| andrepd wrote:
| Sleeper trains are absolutely the superior choice. Instead
| of wearing yourself down from the journey, schedule it so
| you wake up at your destination in the morning.
|
| I dream (heh) of a proper pan-european sleeper train
| network.
| enos-ape wrote:
| One more reason to just invest more in good high speed
| train infrastructure.
|
| https://www.chronotrains.com/?zoom=4.4&lng=4.85&lat=49.23&s
| t...
| llampx wrote:
| It would only take a couple of terrorist incidences on
| the train to make the experience as painful as flying
| already is.
| usrusr wrote:
| Trains can be and have been blown up. But that's mostly
| harmless compared to the horrors that could be done to a
| fully occupied road tunnel with a few well coordinated
| trucks. Should we stop building roads?
|
| Planes are an exceptional target because they can be
| deviated to foreign countries or to dramatic impact sites
| and because are so isolated while in the air. Neither
| applies to trains.
| bombcar wrote:
| Also perfect train security doesn't protect against
| something on the track, and you can't adequately protect
| thousands of miles of track. You can reduce, but not
| eliminate, the risk.
|
| A plane is a self-contained system and most people don't
| have access to surface-to-air missiles.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's a bit of an exaggeration isn't it. Yes there's bag
| scan, and yes you need to buy in advance not to have
| exorbitant prices. Apart from that the experience seems the
| same.
|
| And you shouldn't be taking 1h flights anywhere of course x)
| tsu_tsu wrote:
| "I member" as Southpark would put it.
|
| But seriously, not really shedding tears here. It was nice as
| long as it lasted, but packing your own food isn't that big of
| deal, imo.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Packaging it is fine. Having a clown at security steal my
| cheese because it is deemed a liquid and therefor a bomb is
| where the difficulty lies.
| fakedang wrote:
| Ronald Reagan is like the colon of America, because everything
| that he touched turned into shit.
| te_chris wrote:
| Recently did London to Auckland (via SF) with United and selected
| 'Asian Vegetarian' as my meal. Best decision I've ever made
| travelling long haul: curry wins hands down over bad pasta or the
| grim 'chicken or fish' options.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| leoedin wrote:
| When comparing "flying then" to "flying now", you need to look at
| the real cost of the flights. Yes, the experience in economy
| class has got worse, but the cost of the ticket has also
| significantly dropped. In 2021 dollars, the cost of a round trip
| air fare has basically halved since 1979. You could buy a
| business class ticket now for a comparable price to economy back
| then.
|
| https://www.airlines.org/dataset/annual-round-trip-fares-and...
|
| https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...
| rightbyte wrote:
| > round trip air fare has basically halved since 1979
|
| I don't think that number will hold up if you include square
| feet of personal space and lbs of luggage that might need extra
| fees.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| Or factor in the loss of purchasing power, along with the
| shrinkflation.
|
| I love when people adjust for inflation in these debates but
| don't factor in purchasing power of the dollar comparison.
|
| The ticket price is more expensive now, than 1979.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye there should be a 10 column table with:
|
| Gallons of milk in my grocery store.
|
| Lbs of potatoes of X species.
|
| Feet of 2 by 4s to X spec.
|
| sq inch of flat in Dallas.
|
| Hours worked for a white collar clerk.
|
| Etc. "Inflation adjusted" dollars are not quality adjusted
| really.
|
| In the same way a economy class ticket is a worse
| experience than in the 90s, e.g. a chicken is a worse
| chicken too.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Not to mention order of magnitude reduction of the amount of
| fresh air per passenger allowed to enter the cabin. Not to
| mention that the flight attendants used to be registered
| nurses; now they might not even know how to work the oxygen
| bottles.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| That's the point, though - what you get has diminished, but
| the trade is that you pay substantially less. If you want
| more, you can still pay for premium economy or business. It's
| better to enable people with less money to fly, while still
| letting people get a better experience if they want to spend
| more.
| notahacker wrote:
| The airlines.org figures includes a column with bags and
| fees. More or less halved in real terms since 1990.
|
| You might have lost an inch or two of legroom. Then again,
| you might not because they made the seats skinnier...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye well I agree that it has become cheaper to fly. I just
| don't think it is a 1:1 between the ticket price tag change
| and the value for me change.
| keiferski wrote:
| This is a case where I _wish_ society didn't optimize for the
| lowest price and instead made it acceptable to pay more to make
| the default option more appealing. Yes, you can always pay for
| business class, but it's framed as an upgrade, not the baseline
| standard.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yes, but... today, if you don't need more than carry-on
| luggage and are ok with not getting anything to eat during
| the flight, you are able to afford flying, let's say, from
| Munich to Barcelona for a weekend, which you maybe wouldn't
| have been able to do when "paying more for a more appealing
| default option". Of course it's debatable if encouraging such
| flights is good for the environment, but purely from the
| perspective of having more travel options, I would say it's a
| win...
| keiferski wrote:
| It's my understanding that most of these cheap flights are
| heavily subsidized to begin with.
|
| But my point was more that just as we have certain
| expectations for other things, it would be nice if we had
| the same for air travel - and not just resign ourselves to
| "the absolute lowest price possible" as the defining
| characteristic.
| rob74 wrote:
| If you mean "subsidized" because the airlines don't have
| to pay the kind of taxes on jet fuel that users of road
| (or rail) vehicles have to pay on gas, or that they only
| have to pay airport taxes, but can use the airways free
| of charge, then yes. But no-frills airlines like Ryanair
| are not in the charity business, so you can bet that
| their price calculation is economically sound on the
| whole.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > You could buy a business class ticket now for a comparable
| price to economy back then.
|
| And if you buy business class, you end up with a lie flat seat
| that will likely be better than the economy seat you could buy
| at the time. In addition, the aircrafts now are more
| comfortable with much less noise and higher cabin pressures. In
| addition, flying is much safer now than it was in the 1960s.
| gumby wrote:
| This is an article about US airline domestic flights, so none
| of that is in business class.
| piperswe wrote:
| It is in premium transcontinental business class.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am waiting for the day going to the toilet during flight and
| be faced with a contactless payment terminal to open the door.
| mcsniff wrote:
| After traveling through Europe and seeing the amount of "pay
| per use" bathrooms, I am torn.
|
| On one hand, there are many more public washrooms than in
| North America, and they are generally much cleaner. On the
| other hand, paying to basically be a human being feels wrong
| and I refused to use them.
|
| I've used the toilet on a plane maybe 2 times in my life, and
| I've fly quite a bit, so this probably wouldn't impact me
| much at all.
| bombcar wrote:
| That would run into the FAA; there are a number of things
| that happen on flights that are mandated by the FAA, I
| suspect restrooms (and the drinks) are some of them for
| health reasons.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Ryanair did it >10 years ago, coin slot not contact payment
| terminal however.
| thombat wrote:
| They didn't actually do it. The Ryanair CEO, Michael
| O'Leary, has a well-practiced approach of making outlandish
| claims about Ryanair's thrifty innovations that echo around
| the internet; discount publicity. About the same time he
| claimed that a standing-only section would be introduced
| for PS1 tickets. Of course this also didn't happen.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not in the flights I regularly take.
| shapefrog wrote:
| NY to LA is ~ 5 hours, which is about as long as you get on the
| continental USA. Do you really _need_ to eat? Chicago to NY is
| just over 2 hours - not really enough time for a 3 course meal.
|
| If you are doing the 19 hours from NY to Singapore ... the food
| is pretty good!
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| People who have planned the trip might no need to eat on the
| plane, but business clients who might have a tight schedule or
| hopped onto the flight last minute certainly need the onboard
| dining
| [deleted]
| rjh29 wrote:
| The Asian airlines I've used (JAL, ANA, Singapore, AirAsia) have
| been pretty damn good. It's hard to mess up curry and rice; you
| get salad, side dishes, bread, ice cream and alcohol. Many of the
| dishes are designed by famous chefs, even in economy.
| omnibrain wrote:
| Thai was great too.
|
| And even the small regional Airline we had for the hop from USM
| to BKK catered something delicious. (Noodles with prawns)
| smcl wrote:
| I had a fine time on JAL, theyve come a long way since being
| responsible for one of the more infamous food/air incidents -
| the poop plane:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_food_poisoni...
| rjh29 wrote:
| Wow, thanks for that. So much to unpack here!
|
| 1) 200 people with diarrhea and vomiting. Can't imagine how
| the plane smelled.
|
| 2) JAL's catering manager committed suicide after hearing
| about this.
|
| 3) If the pilots had eaten the food the plane may not have
| even landed safely - at the time pilots did not eat different
| meals to the passengers, but this is now commonplace.
|
| 4) Ultimate cause was actually American - Alaskan cooks in
| Anchorage prepared the food, and one had infected blisters on
| his hand.
|
| 5) Could have been prevented if the food wasn't stored at
| room temperature for 6 and then 8 hours. Matches my
| experience with Japanese people who have no problem leaving
| cooked food out in supermarkets all day long, or leaving
| leftovers overnight at room temperature without chilling it,
| very different to the US or UK.
| mikestew wrote:
| Ah, yes, the inspiration for the 1980 documentary _Airplane!_
| , with Leslie Nielson:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane!
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| These kind of articles are always dumb and never make an apples
| to apples comparison.
|
| It talks about Pan Am in the 1950s.
|
| In May 1952 Pan Am tickets for New York - London roundtrip in
| economy class were $486. And that was the minimum legal price.
| Presumably you could find yourself paying more depending on
| demand.
|
| That's equivalent to $5,584 today.
|
| Google Flights tells me I can get a first class ticket on that
| route for $4,700 today.
|
| So you're paying almost $1,000 more than a modern first class
| ticket and wondering why the food is pretty okay.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Flying was for the rich until the 1970s. The name "Airbus"
| describes it perfectly.
| somedude895 wrote:
| And yet the article says the reason is basically "capitalism
| bad":
|
| > you had airline deregulation by a guy who was an acolyte of
| Ronald Reagan.
|
| > The more horrible you make it to fly coach, the more
| business people will demand to fly business and first class.
| The airlines make a bucket of money off people traveling up
| front, which is why they make coach as oppressive as
| possible.
|
| Yeah no, deregulation made it so the average person could
| travel by plane at all.
| caseyohara wrote:
| Recently there was a great episode on the Freakonomics
| podcast, actually the final episode in a three part series
| on airline economics. It talks about the history of airline
| price regulation and the related economics.
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-your-plane-ticket-too-
| ex...
|
| > Back when the industry was regulated by the Civil
| Aeronautics Board, or C.A.B., airlines were not allowed to
| lower prices to win customers. So they had to find other
| ways to compete.
|
| > They would compete against each other by adding more
| flights on the route. Since you couldn't cut the price,
| what you would do is say, "We have the most flights." And
| that really mattered to business travelers who wanted to be
| able to, if their meeting ended early, to go to the airport
| and quickly catch a flight home. So they were competing on
| frequency, and in other ways in service quality, by
| offering piano lounges on 747s. And they were gradually
| driving down the share of seats that were filled by adding
| more and more flights. And they would eventually get back
| to the point that they weren't earning a great rate of
| return on their investment. So they'd go back to the C.A.B.
| and they'd say, "We need higher fares." And the C.A.B.
| would say, "Yeah, okay, we'll give you higher fares."
| Eventually, in the mid-1970s, people at the C.A.B. figured
| out that this was just an endless loop, where we were
| raising fares, and the planes were getting more and more
| empty, and this was very inefficient. That's where we had
| gotten to -- pretty empty planes with very high prices.
| D13Fd wrote:
| It looks nice, but personally, I'm ok with the change. I'd rather
| pay (much) less and not get the fancy food on a flight I'm
| probably going to sleep through anyway. And, as the article says,
| the current first class experience still offers an upgrade.
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