[millionsofmiles]

Coming back to ticket prices: Basing on German inflation of 2,1% median in the last 30 years, the ticket would have to cost 1678 €, so productivity and cost reduction had to cover the difference of 778€ between the price of 1981 and today.
No wonder food on planes has become that bad. F-class tickets have grown much stronger, at that time an F-ticket was about 2,5 times the PEX and 1,6 fold the Y-ticket.

[Tim2soza]

I was on the first Air UK EDI to London flight. They dished out free bottles of Scotch, and not minatures. Top trumps!

[LuganoPirate]

I’d forgotten the free ciggies Million, and before the porcelain ashtrays they had very nice glass ones, about 7 cms square with ‘Swissair” in raised glass on the bottom. I have several of those.

I never flew LH then, but Swisair in their jumbos had I think 22 of those armchair style seats and of course plenty of caviar!

[TiredOldHack]

And at the other end of the scale:

Air Vietnam, in the early 1960s. DC3s from Saigon to Dalat. Canvas bucket seats, and when the seats were filled, they let people squat in the aisle.

I never did find out what the maximum take-off weight of a DC3 was supposed to be.

[canucklad]

You know when you move house, you always seem to lose something in transit……..

My most treasured air travel piece of memorabilia…..my BOAC junior jet club log book….I still have my badge somewhere in Vancouver!

Most of the entries where made by CP captains who always seemed to be fascinated and delighted to complete it, the log included the record of the Hogmanay flight over the International dateline !

Having forgotten about it, i realised it still had space for one last entry… It was completed on A BA Trident shuttle from LHR to EDI…. .My mate and I had just enjoyed the delights of the big smoke… The 2 of us looking like extra’s from Miami Vice (rolled up jacket sleeves-white t-shirt and matching white loafers) …after handing the logbook over, she came back and requested that i follow her to the cockpit (flight decks had not been invented!!!)

The dor remained open as the remaining passengers observed us chatting and listening in on the captains headset—on returning to our seats more than 1 person was heard to comment—” i told you they were rock stars”

Finally, the captain had warned us that the landing would be hard as he wanted to catch last orders …. so he wasn’t going to use the full runway to stop…he was right…don’t know if he ever managed his beer !

[TiredOldHack]

My younger brother forged his Junior Jet Club entries to get the badge. Swine.

I still have the wonderful tin that contained the sweeties they handed out to kids. Always contained Murraymints and a Crunchie bar, I recall, plus other things. Surmounted by a representation of Concorde in BOAC livery! We use it to keep bandages, aspirins, etc in, in the medicine cupboard.

[Papillion53]

NIRScot – Dan Air! That takes me back! Dan Dair – or should that be Dare?, as they were known by the oilfield boys in the 70’s in Aberdeen. I remember this of course being told by my parents ;-)!

And good old KLMUK – did many a fam trip to AMS and Stansted with their Sales Manager and usually a bunch of TAs. Emphasis was clearly on alcohol and having a good time! 🙂

[canucklad]

Dan Dare was right….. My step dad vowed it was the one airline he would never fly…. CP used to ground handle the charter flights to Canada and it was the agreed opinion that they were the worst maintained aircraft flying!

[pixelmeister]

Air passes brings back memories. I remember flying BA to Miami for a holiday just before Easter. My brother was working up in Columbus Ohio and my wife and I bought Air passes from United ? gave us four sectors for a flat price. Flew Miami – Atlanta, Atlanta-Columbus and then Columbus-Cincinnati, Cincinnati – La Guardia to tyhen do the cross town dash to JFK for the flight back to LHR.

[Shearer]

Also remember the little box of airline “plates” – credit card size pieces of metal with airline name embossed on it.

You put them on a credit-card style swipe thingy (cool description, eh?!) after writing the ticket, to validate it.

Handwritten tickets… those were the days!

[StewartKidd1]

Credit cards? I’m old enough to remember buying tickets before credit cards. I remember buying a ticket to fly home (HKG) from school in 1962 involved a trip to the bank with a draft for around £900 (or does my memory play me false?) and then taking the cash in fivers to the travel agent.

[ImissConcorde]

See one here!
http://snsvo1.seekandsource.com/superplast/vopage2.html

[Shearer]

Oh wow! Thanks for the memories!

[DavidGordon10]

La Guardia to Charlotte on a tiny American Eagle plane, with the flight deck door open – over Washington, sudden turbulence, followed by a loud “oops” from the flight deck, and, out of the port window a similar size private plane that had clearly crossed at the same altitude and no more than yards ahead of us…. Oops indeed.

[LuganoPirate]

Handwritten tickets, that does go back a bit. The great thing about those was I could buy Venice-Lugano-Zurich-Dubai for half the price of Lugano-Zurich-Dubai. A few squiggles, insert “2” bags and 40kgs on the first coupon which was then removed. Check-in desk would assume you’d flown the first sector and that was that. Cheap travel and no hassle!

[Author]

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