Stuff You Should Know - A Brief History of Air Travel

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Today we take to the friendly skies to detail the fascinating history of air travel. From planes with piano bars and lounges to the current no frills varieties. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.

If you put us all together, you get the cast of Wings. I watched a little bit of Wings, but not much. It was actually one of those, I don't want to say unsung, because it was pretty big when it was out. But I think in retrospect, a lot of people who like say like friends or something like that are missing out on a really great show. Yeah, yeah.

I watched, I don't know why it never got its hooks in me, because I did watch a little bit of it and the cast was great. Tony Shalhoub, Steven Weber. Tim Daly, don't forget Tim Daly and Crystal Bernard. Yeah, Tim Daly and Weber. Yeah, Steven Weber, the man. So yeah, anyway, go watch Wings,

but that's not what we're talking about today. That's not the point of this episode. This episode is tangentially related. That's why I brought Wings up in the first place because we're talking about the history of air travel. And it was actually a lot more fascinating than I thought, Chuck. Really?

Because I just, I'm fascinated by this constantly. There's chunks of it that I love and am fascinated by, but overall as a whole concept, I was impressed by how fascinated I was by it. Yeah, you were impressed by your own fascination? Yeah, I was like, wow, way to go, Josh. You really did fascination right. So thanks to Dave for help with this one.

And we're kind of just gonna walk you in a timeline sort of way through passenger air travel not you know how planes work or not plane crashes and hijackings and stuff like that but what was it like from the very first moment human beings stepped on a plane for a commercial type flight and how that's changed over the years from food to bathrooms to smoking to like The terms we use to talk about the people who work there Right. So we should probably start if we're going to talk about this to the very first

passenger airline flight, which was a flight of one human being on January 1st, 1914 from the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airport, or I'm sorry, Airboat Line, was the company. They flew across Tampa Bay. Three thousand people came out to watch this 20-minute flight. The airline was around for three months, flew about 1200 people, and if you're wondering how much that cost back then, about five bucks for a one-way ticket and 10 for a round trip. Which is a million dollars today.

To fly over Tampa Bay. But no, but get this, at the time it was a two hour steamship ride or a 10 hour train ride. So a 20 minute flight was not bad. I would have coughed up some money for that to save that time. Um, I thought it was more, uh, uh, like a, a proving ground for the guy who created the

planes, but the, the did kind of establish this concept that people would pay you to fly them around in these newfangled airplanes. I don't know how much it would have like, like how long it would have taken to really kind of gain ground. Had it not been for the postal service though, because like with a lot of things,

the US government kind of took the biggest risks and absorbed the biggest initial costs in researching and figuring out how to establish commercial flight essentially. The first international flight was also from Florida and it went to Cuba and just put a pin in this flight because this will come back. It was Aero Marine Airways and they ran for about four years in the early 1920s in wicker

plane seats. I was just curious. Are you scared of those? Oh, good question. I saw a picture of them and no, I would have been okay with these. So it's strictly wicker wheelchairs. Wheelchairs. Yes. It's the combination of the two.

So old timey wheelchairs. So walking into a PR1 doesn't freak you out. No, no. Okay. It makes me think I'm at prom and about to have my picture taken. Okay, all right, great. So like you said, the St. Petersburg-Tampa airboat line folded in a few months,

Aeromarine Airways folded in four years. And I mean, the fact that planes had been invented by then eventually they would have gained enough ground that we would have commercial aviation like we do today, but who knows how long it would have taken had the US government not gotten involved. Because like with a lot of other major technologies that we have today, the government stepped in and took on the risk and the initial costs in developing commercial aviation, and they did it under the auspices of the Postal Service.

Yeah, airmail, baby On May 15th, 1918 is when the first airmail flights took off, servicing at the time only DC, Philly, and New York. And a little side note that's kind of fun, the very famous stamp, I know we talked about it in stamp collecting, the inverted Jenny. There was a printing error and this plane was upside down and that was a very limited run of these upside down stamps, so it's it and stamp collecting the inverted You could air mail something from New York to California. And it was a big success through the 1920s, such that they eventually were like, all right, now we can go private with this. Yeah, they handed over the job of delivering the mail to private companies. So now we had commercial aviation, but it was all mail and cargo, right?

But eventually that evolved into also moving people from place to place. So that's where commercial aviation, at least in the United States, but kind of around the world really finds its footing. Like, that's where it grew from. I just find that fascinating. Oh, totally. And I wasn't expecting to find it fascinating. You really let yourself down, huh?

Yeah. So, like you said, in the 1920s, they said, hey, why don't we start flying rich white people all over the country? Because that's exclusively what it was for a long time. A round trip from New York to LA, and this is not nonstop. There are lots of layovers to fuel up and stuff like that. It was 260 bucks in the 1920s, which amounts to our friends at the West Egg Inflation website to about 4,600 bucks today.

Back then, that was half the price of a new car. And so it was rich people. They only flew about 6,000 people in the year 1929 which you know it was it was very exclusive at first. You had to fly low because they the planes weren't pressurized so it was a very rocky turbulent flight. They were very cold because the planes were insulated. They were incredibly loud. I think the, the, the tri-motor 10 goose, and if you're a, well, I was about to say if you're an aviation enthusiast, you already know these planes, but I encourage people

to become aviation enthusiasts because there's nothing more fun than looking up these old planes like the 10 goose. A very, I don't know about how rare, but I haven't seen that many tri motors in my day. Sure. So it was kind of cool. It carried 12 people and flew at 120 decibels at takeoff. Right, which I saw a chart, and that is louder than being at the front row of a rock concert. What?

And I just assumed they were accepting Dinosaur Jr. from that. Yeah. Yeah. And Mudhoney, I can vouch for that one too. Right. So it's still really loud, loud enough that the stewards had to communicate with the passengers

using like megaphone. Yeah. Like the old timey ones that they used to use at pep rallies and you know The old Yaley days at the turn of the last century, right? No diet coke So As you put it flying was really awful. It was not a fun affair It was just so novel that people still put up with the cold and the noise and the the pukiness

but cold and the noise and the, the pukiness. Um, but, uh, train travel was still like, it was more affordable. It was a more reliable because there are tons of plane breakdowns at the time. Basically some things never change is what I took from that, but trains were still kind of like the way to go. It was just flying was just so luxurious and such

a novelty that actually people used to come out and watch planes take off at the airport. I guess LaGuardia had a like a skywalk where people would come and watch the planes take off and there would be more people during the like a single day that frequented the skywalk then flew in or out of LaGuardia. Yeah, that's that's still a fun thing. I think a lot of cities have either municipal airports that have bars nearby. We have one here in Atlanta, the 57th Fighter Group. This is a World War II themed restaurant and bar where we shot some video stuff years ago.

But it's cool. You can go sit out on a bar patio and watch the planes take off. And it's a lot of fun, I enjoy it. That was from our TV show where we were doing cloud seating. Oh, I thought it was one of those interstitials. I'm pretty sure it was from the cloud seating part, yeah, with the baseball game where it rained or the softball game. Oh, you know what, we did both. We did cloud seating for the baseball game

because we faked being in a biplane and flying when it was in fact just sitting on the ground. And we also, I remember, went over there to shoot an interstitial on Japanese stragglers because we were at one point wandering through the bamboo on that property. Oh yeah, that's right. They have like old World War II Jeeps and stuff there. And we probably did that because our good buddy Chad, who made that show, could like shoot there for a hundred bucks or something. Exactly. So anyway, trains, like you said, were reliable. They were comfy. People could afford it.

Planes travel wasn't really hitting it big at that point. But this is when it started becoming a thing. So like, hey, we need to know how to talk about this stuff. And so they kind of borrowed from steam ships as far as the terminology goes, right? Yeah, and one reason, so yes, you have stewards that we call flight attendants today, but that's just like on a ship.

There was the captain of the plane, not the pilot. Um, they call them airlines, very similar to calling them cruise lines. Um, I even saw a picture of an early plane and they had straight up portholes for the windows on the plane. So I'd never noticed it before, but it did borrow a lot of terminology. And I think the reason why is because a lot of

the early planes were,boats, essentially. They were like, like LaGuardia is on the water because it, it was originally like a marine airport, like for airboats to fly in and out. Did you know that? I did not know that, but I'm not surprised. I found it fascinating. Yeah, well, that very first flight company in Tampa was called Airboat. Exactly, right.

Yeah, so there was kind of like a distinction. I think also they were like, see everybody likes cruising on steamships. This is basically the same thing. The words are essentially the same, so there you go. Yeah, but these can't sink into the ocean. They'll just fall from the sky and maybe land in the ocean. Yeah, it's a it's a twofer The you mentioned stewards that was what you know, the terminology changed over the years from Stewart

eventually to stewardess because The first stewards were exclusively male in thes, a woman named Ellen Church came along. She was a nurse from Iowa who wanted to be a pilot, but was not able to because it was in the 1930s and she was a woman. So she said, all right, I want to change the way the game is on the plane then, and let's get rid of these male stewards and bring in the stewardess, which was a

name that lasted all the way up until the late 1970s when the term flight attendant came along. But as someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s as you did, it was not, it took a while for for flight attendant to catch on. I would say it took a good 25 to 30 years before it was, you just did not hear the word stewardess anymore. Yeah. And you still hear it occasionally from some of our boomer relatives. So Ellen Church, she was a pioneer, a ground breaker.

She worked for Boeing, which became United, didn't know that, answers a lot of questions though. And she hired Boeing's first eight stewardesses. She only flew for, I think like, um, 18 months, a year and a half, cause she was in a car wreck and went back to nursing. Um, but she, that was it. Like the, the genie was out of the bottle because I think we talked about this in our flight attendant episode, the premise was if you were on a flight and there was

a woman there, she would have a calming, homey influence, but also there was like a subtle dare, like are you going to be such a sissy that this woman is able to fly and you can't because you're scared? Come on. So like all that combined just opened the door for stewardesses from that point on, but not women pilots, not for a long time. Yeah, and one thing that we didn't mention that is a huge, huge deal was not only was Church a nurse, but she recruited other nurses and all of those first eight stewardesses were nurses, and almost all the early flight attendants were nurses. And, you know, the idea again, not again not just you know besides being a woman

that can help reassure you but a nurse that's on board is really gonna help reassure you because they just have that a nurse has got to have a good demeanor got a good bedside manner or in this case first-class seat side manner. To me I find it less than reassuring it's like well what all goes on planes that you need a nurse on them at all times. You know? You're overthinking it. I would have back then too. I would have old-time you overthought it. Yeah so those were the early flight attendants, these women who were nurses, but again Church could not become a pilot because they didn't allow that for, geez, probably another 40

years after she came along. The first woman pilot, commercial airline pilot I could find, started flying in 1969. Her name was Turi Wideroo, who flew for Scandinavian Air Systems, SAS. And then four years later in the United States, Emily Howell Warner, started flying for Frontier, and Bonnie Taberzi in the same year, 1973, started flying for American. And Warner became the first captain, not just pilot, I think in 1976. So it took a little while for women

to make it out of the cabin to the cockpit. Yeah, and we should point out too that Bonnie Tiberzi. That was her name, right? Yep. She was a pilot at 24 years old. Mm-hmm That's Disturbing to me That that disturbs me today and it would disturb me even or maybe it would have been more believable back then, but... Definitely. I'm not trying to be ageist,

but if I see a 24-year pilot getting on my Delta flight, I'm just inherently a little bit freaked out. It's probably wrong of me, probably showing my age. I just want a little bit of experience, you know? Yes, but I think the ages are different. I think back in 1973, a 24-year was akin to like a 50 year old today. No. I'm just trying to make you feel better here.

Well, how would you feel? I don't, all of a sudden I feel like I'm an ages jerk for worrying about that. Would, do you think most people are, would you worry about that? If they were like the captain? Well, she was a pilot at the time. The pilot at least. I mean, if there were other people who are older in there, I feel better. If they were just the one 24 year old, I'd be nervous.

Yes. If they brought their mommy. It would have little to do with them being 24, but there's only so much experience you can cram into those 24 years. That's what I'm talking about. It's experience. I have nothing against 24 year olds, but unless they're like, no, they started flying, you know,

probably when they were seven. Yeah. Their child air prodigy. Anyway, 24 seemed young and I just thought that was funny. Have you realized that we haven't taken a break yet? No, but it's the perfect time to. Yeah, it's fascinating. All right. I'm gonna go think think about what I've done today, and then we'll be right back. ["Learning Stuff with Joshua and Charles"] Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. In July 1881, a man walked into a train station, pulled out a gun, and shot the President of the United States. James Garfield's assassination horrified the American people, and they wanted his killer,

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Woohoo. The whole thing really kind of started in the 20s. Um, and get this. So you said in 1929, 6,000 people flew in that entire year. Yep. Less than a decade later, 1938, more than 1.2 million Americans alone flew every year. So it had really started to open up in the 1930s.

But it was still business travelers typically and wealthy people. Yeah, absolutely. And the planes, you know, and this is why people started flying more. Things got a little bit better. Still cost a lot you know, and this is why people started flying more. Things got a little bit better. Still cost a lot of money, but it was a little more comfy. In 33, Boeing came out with the dual prop 247, gorgeous plane. This had an insulated cabin.

It was the first one where you weren't freezing. Had 12 cushioned upholstered seats. It had hot and cold water, it had food service, and it was just it was a step up and this was in 1933. Yeah, yeah, and then I think you're right, I think that's why air travel became more popular, because the planes just got nicer. After Boeing released the 247-9er, Douglas Aircraft Company came up with the DC-3 which is what's a niner? I it's just a airline lingo thing CB. Okay. Oh, I thought it meant nine it did

I just added it because I can't say Boeing 247 without adding a niner Okay, but to be clear, it's not the 247 nine. No, it's just the 247 ninerash niner. So you don't even have to be an airplane enthusiast to be like, I've heard of the DC-3 before. Um, that's because by the end of the 1930s, 90% of all the airplanes flying around in the world were DC-3s and even Boeing, which remember had its own airline that became United, basically flew with DC-3s even though they were the ones making

the 247s, Niners. Yeah, absolutely. Thankfully the Douglas Aircraft Company gave us the DC stands for Douglas Commercial. The Douglas Commercial 3 had 21 seats, had an actual kitchen, a little mini kitchen galley, carried a lot more fuel, and it was the first one that could go nonstop from New York to Chicago at that point. And it was, did you say the percentage that 90% were DC-3s? You bet I did. I said 9 or 0%. Right. And I found this one little story I sent to you.

The DC-3 is just a gorgeous plane. And there is one that is at least a few years ago. I couldn't find any update, but in 2021 in Finland, Finnish Air brought out a DC-3 that was 80 years old, restored it for service, and it did 40 member flights over that summer and their plan and their goal was for that thing to just keep it going and so it eventually would hit the hundred year mark. Very nice. Would you go on it?

No. Okay. No. I'm not even afraid to fly. I'm just smart. Oh, it's such a beautiful plane though. I love it. For sure. So that's

this I think we've reached the end of the 30s by now right? Sure. And you had said at the outset that that we were kind of following a timeline that is a lie because we're hopping around here or there. You're right. And this is a good example of that because we're gonna talk now about airplane bathrooms. Because there's a lot of myths around airplane bathrooms, and we're going to extinguish them with extreme prejudice. That's right. There were bathrooms very, very early on on airplanes,

like other things were modeled on ships and steamers, the bathrooms are no different. They were much, much bigger than they are now. Very nice. But what you did was you just pee-pee'd and poo-poo'd in sort of like an outhouse. It was just a glorified bucket that someone emptied after the flight. And they did that until we got to the sort of blue chemical water toilets that came about later. Yes, but even after the blue chemicals were introduced, it was still essentially a tank, a holding tank under the toilet seat.

But we have a person to praise, a saint named St. James Kemper, who came up with the vacuum flush airplane toilet. And what he should have done is said, it's the vacuum flush airplane toilet. And what he should have done is said, it's the vacuum flushed airplane toilet. No, it's not actually just flushing it out into the atmosphere, even though it sounds like it. Yeah. I think a lot of people probably think that, right? Oh, totally. In the back of my mind, every time I'm like, it's possible. Yeah. It's what it sounds like. It sounds like it just opens the toilet up and all of a sudden it's, there's nothing between

you and the air that you're flying through at 500 miles an hour. That's what it seems like to me, right? Because it makes that same sound, but what it's actually doing is using pneumatic action to suck down sometimes at 130 miles an hour, I think on like the Airbus, uh, A380, um, into that holding tank that's way far away now from the seat.

So it's far less gross, but somebody still has to pump it out every, every, after every flight. And I saw that on an average 747 flight, 230 gallons of sewage are produced. Oh gosh. I mean, yeah. At least it's not a bucket. Yeah, and as a reminder, I am so averse to sounds

like ambulances, I plug my ears when I flush things. Yes, yeah. Including airplane bathrooms, right? It's the worst, that's just one of the sounds my ears can't take. Yeah, I'm interested by this. No, I'll say it. I'm fascinated by this. Are you impressed with that? Is it the, I'm impressed that I'm fascinated by it. Yeah. Yeah,

that's what I mean. Is it that it's a high pitch sound? Is it that it's a whooshing sound? Is it that, what is it about that sound that you don't like? And apologies to everybody who has misophonia at the W-H-O-O-S-H sound. It is super, super loud. It's super, super sudden and sharp. And it's a super small space. So it's just, it's too much for me in that little space. I'm with you. It is jarring. I have to remind myself, like, no, don't, don't get pushed back

and try to steady yourself by putting your hand on the wall. Never touch the wall. It is a jarring sound, I agree with you. But it's overwhelming, essentially, is what you're saying. Yeah. But you can wash up. I gotcha. No. You cut your hand off at that point.

So another thing we can definitely say has not happened, another myth, is that frozen blue feces and pee pee don't have, you know know don't come out of the plane and kill people like at the beginning of that episode of six feet under There may be frozen blue stuff, but it's from a leak or something that has that freezes when it hits the air. It's not actual body stuff well, I Think the myth is that it's purpose. I think that leaks do happen in chunks of ice have hurt injured people before. I don't know if anybody's been killed by it, but the other thing that can happen is

that this ice, which is, it's called blue ice, which is it's that sewage that's produced like the chemicals in the water and the waste all combined. Yeah. It can, depending on where it happens and how, what altitude it's dropped out, it can melt on the way down. And so you can be splattered by this disgusting sewage rain or have ice, you know, come through

your house and bash your shoulder like happened to one poor woman, I think in Alabama or Louisiana. You remember this, you didn't watch Six Feet Under, right? Sure. I watched the whole thing. Oh, okay. You remember this, you didn't watch Six Feet Under, right? Sure, I watched the whole thing. Oh, okay, you remember that episode, that was one of the openers.

No, I don't, but I'm not surprised. It sounds like- It was one of those where they try and, they started doing it more and more where they would try and mislead you and you would think like, oh, this is how that person's gonna die. And this is one, I can't remember what happened at the beginning, but I think it's like,

you think this guy's gonna have a heart attack or something. And then he's like, I'm gonna go cut the grass, and he goes out in the backyard and through the kitchen window, he'd see the blue eyes in him. That's awesome. It was pretty good. I went back and watched just the last episode again.

It's really good, but it just does not have the same impact if you haven't watched the whole series leading up to it recently. Yeah, yeah, agreed. One of the great all-time great last episodes, though, for sure. Totally. Great finale. All right, so now we're flying. We're back to the timeline. Oh, okay, good. Thank God. I was... My knees were...

Marotten liar. So we're back to World War II. During World War II, there was a lot of, obviously, restrictions for military rationing of fuel. So there wasn't a ton of air travel commercially during World War II, but right after that, people really got into it. And 1955 was finally when air travel overtook

train travel in the United States. Yeah, and two years after that, it became more likely that somebody would fly by plane to Europe than take a steamship. So by 1957, air travel had become the dominant, the dominant factor in American travel. New airlines were launching all over the place. There was a lot of competition in trying to get customers, but it was all the way until 1978 that the airlines were deregulated. So previous to that, the government said what routes you could fly. I don't know if they set the prices, but the prices had to be the same.

I'm sure they worked with the airlines. No, they set the prices. Well the prices had to be the same. I'm sure they worked with the airlines. No, they set the prices. Well, by working with the airlines though, because they obviously couldn't bankrupt the airlines. No, no, no. Um, but you also said what routes they're allowed to fly. There are also routes that they had to fly. Like cities that you would be like, what?

You used to fly from New York to Topeka nonstop. Yeah, they used to do that. Um, because the federal government was like, Topeka nonstop? Yeah, they used to do that because the federal government was like, Topeka needs airplanes to come get people too. They want to get out of there. So they made sure that cities around the country were serviced that after deregulation, that was one of the first things that stopped. They're like, we're not flying to Topeka anymore. We'll talk about deregulation in a second.

But before deregulation, because the prices of the tickets were the same, essentially across the board, the way that airlines competed for business was by being like, come aboard our airline and be treated like a king or queen for your flight. It's going to be amazing. That's right. United had a literal red carpet. If you were going to jump on their DC-7, which was by the way a four prop Douglas commercial aircraft. Another gorgeous plane. In-flight meals were really pretty special at the time.

There were multi-course dinners. I mean, nowadays, the only thing I fly is Delta. And I think first class is the only one that has meals even. I don't think anyone else even gets a meal. But back then it was just a lot fancier. There was real silverware, which they may have now, I don't know, and tablecloths and stuff like that.

Dude. And then they also tried to, you know, make your kids feel special by giving them, like, junior stewardess or junior pilot wings and stuff like that. The meals, like, if you look up airline food of the past or something like that and look at old photos, there's, like, people in chef's hats carving like hams and roast beef, like seat side.

It was amazing, like the kind of meals people were served. Yeah, it was just, it's nuts. And you can look at old like menus and stuff too. It was a whole different ball game. And that was like, your ticket included that in the price and everybody on the plane got that kind of treatment. Yeah, and there weren't as many people on these flights so you could afford to do food a little better.

Not afford cost-wise, but it's just hard to, you couldn't feed 400 people well on a plane. Not well, no. And I saw that at least in some airlines, they would prepare these meals like an hour before the flight and put them on. And yeah, you can't do that with 400, but you could with 50 maybe. Yeah.

So one of the other things that they did was encourage smoking. Like not only allowed smoking, they encouraged it. They're like kick back, relax and smoke some cigarettes on your flight. And in fact, I think it was, I think it was United that gave out Chesterfield cigarettes, like exclusively. And there's like one of those 50s illustrations of a flight attendant walking around with a carton of Chesterfields, just holding it open for anybody who wants to come and grab a complimentary pack.

Amazing and gross. And we'll get put a pin in that because more on smoking coming up. Okay. Because we're just going on a timeline here. Since we are on that timeline still, it is the 1950s. Air travel was booming for white Americans. And I say that because while airlines themselves were not segregated, a lot of the airports were. And, you know, especially obviously in the South, they would usher black people into a different part of the airport. The facilities were not as good, basically all but discouraging black Americans from flying. This started changing a little bit in the 1940s with the Washington National, it was the only federally

owned airport, and the NAACP targeted them, you know, with protests and stuff, and the government, since it was a federally owned airport and the only one, had regulatory power so they ended segregation at that airport in 1948. But, you know, it was all the way up until like the 1960s when the DOJ started suing airports in the South by saying like, hey, the, you know the the segregated part of your airport is is no good and you're providing an inferior service and you can't do that yeah I saw Shreveport Louisiana had the last airport in

America to be desegregated and that was in 1963 oh we shouldn't have mentioned that last part yet because we are going now to the jet age and that really started in the fifties. Yeah. We're jumping around the timeline. Yeah, we are. We are. So there's a, there's a discrepancy about when the jet age exactly started.

I think 1958 was when the first commercially available jet, um, service really kind of began to be widespread. But I know for a fact that the term jet set, which related specifically to wealthy people who flew around the world using jets, was coined in the early 50s by society columnist Igor Kassini.

And so he either knew what was coming or somehow The the wealthy were using other jets I guess maybe chartering them or something to fly around the world the fashionable parties and that it wasn't until the 50s that Less than uber wealthy people were able to start using jet travel Is it possible that jet had an alternate meaning? No possible that jet had an alternate meaning? No. So he predicted that 1948 would come along with the very first jet turbine engine in the Boeing 707.

1948 or 58? 58. Yeah, he said 48. So yeah, I think that there were other jets, like there was the de Havilland Comet predated the 707. I think the 707 just made it so that you could carry more people, which meant that ticket prices were lower, which meant that the jet age really opened up for society at large. And Boyd did it because that cut air

travel in half basically. The transcontinental flight from New York to London went from 15 hours to about 7 on that 707 and it went up with people, you know, about 150 to 220 passengers, which was double what a DC-7 could hold. Up with people. The 747 came along too. That really kind of helped expand and open up the jet travel for the average person because you could suddenly fit 500 people in what was known as the Queen of the Skies,

and you could fit 500 people in a plane and still have room for some swanky, swanky 70s lounges and bars that they used to build in the 747. Oh, my friend, when you sent me that link. I love it. Name the title of the article at least so people can look up those pictures. I know that it was on Executive Traveler, and it was called, Recalling the Fabulous Bars and Lounges of the Boeing 747.

Looking at those pictures does something to me that I can't explain. Mm-hmm, I know exactly what you mean that I can't explain. Mm-hmm. I know exactly what you mean. I don't know. It's like the opposite of the whoosh of an airplane bathroom. Yeah. It's the exact opposite. I don't know what it is.

That same lounge is fairly cool if it's just on the ground somewhere in someone's home. But those things, seeing people sitting around on those sofas and somebody playing the piano while they drink martinis, it makes me crazy, crazy jealous. Yeah, no, I know. Luckily, people like Richard Branson came along and were like, we need to get these things back. And so on, I don't know if Virgin's still around anymore,

or if they are, I think they kind of phased out some of their lounges, but there used to be bars on Virgin's airplanes. Yeah. And I know on Qatar Airways, they are known for having a pretty great bar on their airplanes, I think 777s. Yeah, I sat at one on that flight to Australia. So I have seen it and partaken in that situation. It just wasn't the 70s though, huh?

Yeah, I mean, he did a fine job for modern airplanes and what a modern bar on an airplane might look like, but man, it ain't nothing like those old school ones. No, I'm with you. Those were gorgeous. I feel you, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, but it was too good to be true, those would not last long because they said,

hey, you know what, we get rid of that awesome cocktail piano bar lounge up there. We can fit a lot more plane seats and flights will be cheaper. That was technically good for everybody. I guess so. I think domestic flights in 1970 are about what they cost today for adjusting for inflation, of course. But the international flights are where they really got you. Still. A round trip ticket from 19, in 1970 from New York to London costs five grand. That's just a regular, regular class ticket.

You can get there today, nonstop on British Airways for $586 round trip. Really? So it definitely, yeah, I looked it up. Their first class in some of British Airways for $586 round trip. Really? So it definitely, yeah, I looked it up. Their first class in some of the airlines starts for those trips at about five grand, but then also I think KLM has like a $17,000 round trip first class ticket.

So it definitely varies, but just the regular class ticket where they put you in a cattle car, cheek to jowl by your fellow passengers and toss you some Cheetos, and say settle in for nine hours, you can do that for $586. All right, not bad. Frequent flyers back then in the 1670s were pretty much men flying for business, expensing it to the company, and to try and get that business with the company. This is when you started getting the whole idea,

the very outdated and misogynistic idea of like, hey, let's get some good-looking ladies in there, put them in little mini skirts, and tell them to flirt with these businessmen, get them drunk and flirt with them. Tell them that quote that Dave dug up. Yeah, this is from a woman who worked as an advertising exec in 1967 that said, when a tired businessman gets on an airplane,

we think he ought to be allowed to look at a pretty girl. For God's sake is what I think they cut off. That was the, that was just the general feel, the zeitgeist for a long time. I mean, that's not like that went away, you know, decades ago. Oh no, for sure. Like, yeah.

Should probably take a break, huh? Yes, I think we should, Chuck. I think we should. All right. So let's do that. We'll be right back. ["Learnin' Stuff with Joshua and Charles"] Learnin' stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

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Open your free iHeart app and search Becoming an Icon. So, we mentioned, you know, we got to talk about smoking. We mentioned they used to hand out packs of cigarettes literally at first, those Chester Fields. And that was just a thing where it was just, it was looked at as this luxurious activity to sit back and smoke on a plane and just relax with your cigarette. And they encouraged smoking like all the way up through the 70s. And it was a real problem for flight attendants, especially working, you know, there are reports and we may have even talked about this in the flight attendant episode where they couldn't

even like see from one end of the plane to the other. Sometimes it was so thick with smoke. Yeah. And jumping ahead in time, there was actually class-action lawsuit from American flight attendants not American Airlines American like the United States Yeah, the 300 million dollar settlement from the tobacco industry because they've been exposed to cigarette smoke Whether they smoked or not some of them developed lung cancer from it and other maladies Beep and they they uh, I think in 1997. Um, but the reason that they won that 1997 is because they've been inhaling

that from since the thirties essentially, but it really started to get bad. It seemed like it from the fifties to the seventies. Oh yeah, for sure. And if we're going on our timeline here, uh, smoking sections came about in 1971, which is, uh, as Emily always says, that's like having a no peeing section in a pool. Not very effective. And then beyond the smoke,

people hanging their cigarettes out in the aisle, flight attendants are literally getting burned like cigarette burns on the reg. Finally in 1987, California, of course, said, hey, if you're flying within our state, you're not smoking. In 1990, federal regulation said no smoking if it's a six-hour flight or less, domestic flight, but if you're going from Miami to Seattle, you deserve to light up. Then Delta, and all the way into 1995, was the very first airline to say,

no more smoking, ever. Yeah, I was among the last. I smoked on an airplane, legitimately, and I think it was in 1995. I love that story. It's very great. Yeah, I was like, this is, yeah, the smoking section, it's just some seats that are designated for the smokers to sit in. There's no partition or anything like that. Yeah. It's weird looking back in retrospect, it's weird. But also one of the things that I didn't realize is that still today you'll see ashtrays on airplanes.

And before it was like, oh, okay, those are old airplanes and these are the ashtrays from yesteryear. But you'll still see them on brand new airplanes. And the reason why is it's federal law to have an ashtray near the bathroom, because even though you're not supposed to smoke on a plane, they want you to be able to put one out if you are the jerk who tries it anyway. Yeah. So you don't cause a danger. Yeah. Because a fire on an airplane is not good.

Yeah, for sure. And I know I mentioned it on past episodes, but I did take one flight, a smoking flight to Europe in, I think, 1996 or so. So internationally, they were still smoking, and it was just awful. Yeah, this was to Amsterdam on KLM in, I think, 1995 that I smoked. And I smoked a lot. Mine was too, buddy. I really took full advantage of it. Because I knew it was in the air, that this is it. That it was going away, so I better smoke a while I got them. Yeah, and you know, I smoked the occasional cigarette

back then, but I don't know, I didn't have any desire to smoke on the plane. OK. Well, I'm sorry if I blew you out with the smoke. No, no, no, no. That's what a jerk move that is. We were not on the same flight, but I did fly to Amsterdam as well, but I didn't smoke cigarettes on that flight. Anyway, food? Yeah, because I mentioned that there's like food was like, like there would be a guy with a chef's

hat carving ham next to your seat. It was like that. It wasn't always like that. That kind of came along in the golden age in the, I think the ths, the 50s really, to the 70s. Um, it started out that way, but that was back when you had six passengers. So they would make like a Mignon Avile and Russian sauce on a DC-3 for United. Um, they were more often than not, I think, feed you during a refueling stop. Cause you mentioned how long it takes to get to

Europe in a turboprop plane That's not just the flying time. That's like landing and refueling time And so they would often like set up tables in the hangar whatever and feed you like pretty good meal While you're waiting for the refueling that happened more often than feeding you a good meal in the early days on the plane Yeah for sure. Pan American Airlines would come along and develop that, I know we talked about this in some episodes, they kind of predated the TV dinner. And TV dinners kind of came from these airline meals

where they had a little frozen meal in the little partition tray. And that was in 1946 and the TV dinners came along in the 50s. and that was in 1946 and the TV dinners because for the first time you have this price competition and they were like we can't afford this stuff, we're not gonna start giving, you know, we're not gonna give out great food anymore.

And you know, it wasn't great, but hot food. They made the decision that people wanted cheaper tickets and less frills, that they valued a less expensive ticket than the experience of flying. I was one of those people, by the way. I mean, they're right. Yeah. Like, like people do value that, but at the time there weren't really like budget air carriers.

That's not true. There were, there was one I hadn't heard of called Laker Airways, uh, Freddie Lake, a rich, uh, British guy founded it. And it was actually the world's first budget airfare, uh, airline. Uh, it predatedated frontier and everybody. Um, but for the most part, like these were like the major carriers who now we're competing with other carriers who like, it was just a huge,

huge shakeup in the business. And what's funny is some of the biggest airlines were like, we don't want deregulation. It's going to do all sorts of terrible things. People are going to stop flying to Topeka. Mark my words. I read like an editorial ad that it's like the kind that had a cartoon, like an editorial cartoon and like an article, but it was an ad taken out by Delta arguing against deregulation.

And one of the things they predicted was that it would lead to airline consolidation, fewer choices and in the end, higher ticket prices. And it turns out Delta was right. It just took a few decades because at first ticket prices went down, competition increased, there were more airlines that came out of nowhere and entered the market. And the consumer won out for a while,

but then over time as frills were cut more and more and airlines looked to cut costs more and more, air travel just kind of became the living nightmare that it is today. Yeah. Thanks to Jimmy Carter. I mean, that was implied, but I just wanted to say it. Well, I mean, he signed the bill who, uh, pushed it through. Do you know that?

Uh, Rosalyn. Okay. No, I remember even at the time and still I'm like I just want to get somewhere I don't I mean if it's a really really long flight I can appreciate the in-flight service but otherwise I'm like just make it cheaper and just get us there and leave me alone but I what I think doesn't happen is they're not like alright We're gonna cut out the in-flight service and you won't believe how cheap the tickets are gonna be they would just be like okay now more for us Exactly, that's that was the knock-on effect of deregulation and it ultimately

Became a disservice to the customer and ended up serving the airlines much much more handsomely You ever have a bisque off butter the airlines much more handsomely. You ever have a Biscoff butter? Yeah, I have. Just straight out of the jar on a spoon. Mm-hmm. Yes, I have. I like it, but I think I've had one too many Biscoff cookies. I can't eat them on the airplane anymore. I love them.

They're good, but I just can't have them. I'll tell you what I like are those little mustard pretzels. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. I don't like those. Oh, well, I'll trade you my Bus call for your mustard pretzels any day. We're great seat mates just because we could cigarette in the back of the plane So we're gonna finish up with a couple of quick bits here inflight entertainment That aero marine airlines that we mentioned at the beginning that was said to put a pin in the first bits here. In-flight entertainment, that and put up a projector and screened, Howdy Chicago for all 11 passengers.

And I was like, why would they show a movie called Howdy Chicago, which turns out to be a short promotional film for the city of Chicago on a flight from Key West to Cuba, and it turns out it was not a flight to Key West to Cuba, it was a flight around Chicago. So the whole thing was kind of like a promotional thing, but that was the first flight movie.

But still the same airline. Yeah, same airline. They were just, they suddenly ended up in Chicago somehow. Yeah, I gotcha. And also, hold on, I want to correct myself real quick. I said the first discount airline was Laker Airways. That's actually not true. The very first discount airline was Pacific Southwest Airlines, which started flying cut rate seats in 1949.

And is that what Southwest is today? I couldn't find that that's the case, no. Oh, okay. So not the same company? No, I think Southwest kind of was built out of scratch by a couple of Dallas oilmen. Oh, okay. In 61, TWA, good old Transworld Airlines, was the first to offer in-flight movies. This was, I sort of remember these when they would just show the movie on a screen, a single screen.

Yeah, everybody watched the same movie together. It was kind of cool in that way. It was kind of cool, and you know, depending on where you you were you could either see it or not see it. And then in the 60s is when they had the little overhead and I remember these too the little overhead screens not in the seat back but they were just up above you where the air conditioner and the light was. Yeah, I I totally remember that as well. Again, it was a communal thing like people would laugh out it was like watching a movie in a theater, but on a plane. Yeah. I liked it. One of the things that was

noteworthy about it though, Chuck, is that you, if you look at old pictures of people watching movies on planes, they look like they all have stethoscopes in their ears. I remember those. I do too. And I was like, why do I remember that? It's because, so these are new, these are sound delivered through pneumatic tubes.

It's not an electronic signal by any means. It's just basically an echo that you're hearing of the sound being broadcast through tubes that you're connected into. Delta didn't phase those out until 2003. That's why I remember them. Yeah, they were, it wasn't that long ago and the little screen would fold down from the ceiling Yep.

and if you pinch that tube the sound would go away. I don't remember that part. Yeah, you pinch the tube of your seat mate just to get at him. Oh yeah, I don't remember that at all. Maybe you're not such a great seat mate after all. Oh, uh, so the 88, 88 was when the seatback screens finally came around with Northwest Airlines and Wi-Fi in 2003. I believe it was British Airways and Lufthansa were the first to give you Wi-Fi. And now people are so, so spoiled by all of that.

Yeah. and now people are so, so spoiled by all of that. Yeah, and also it's evolved from the seat back screen to your tablet now. Like I've been on flights where it's like, we don't have the screens, you better have a tablet because that's the only way you're watching a movie, pal. And I mean, I'll throw a temper tantrum and get kicked off a plane for that. You don't bring a dumb tablet on a plane?

No. You're Josh Clark. They show me the movies. Ha ha ha ha ha. Uh, Chuck, just before we finish here, um, do you remember, there's some defunct airlines. Do you remember Hooter Air? No.

You don't remember Hooter's Air? I don't think so. Was it the, the restaurant? Yes. But, like, an a-air like an airline and it flew to, I think the hub was Daytona Beach appropriately enough. Of course. I never flew it, but I was aware of it. And I'm sure the flight attendants

were wore that outfit, right? Yes. Like they could have just have stepped out of a Hooters. They wore the exact same outfit from what I remember. Okay. Oh, you actually flew on it? No, no, I definitely did. Oh, okay. I said I was aware of it.

And sorry, it was out of Myrtle Beach, not Daytona Beach, I was way off. Oh, okay. You know, that does ring a little bit of a bell now that I think about it. And then earlier, I remember the, I think the first African-American flight attendant worked for Mohawk Airlines.

And she, I remember Mohawk from Mad Men. Oh, yeah, okay. That was a big account. I knew that sounded familiar somehow. Yeah. And then there was also Value Jet. Do you remember them? Yeah, sure.

I flew with Value Jet a lot. Oh, and of course, Eastern Airlines. That was a very big airline when we were kids. Yeah, and there was a, I cannot for the life of me remember the name, which is sad, cause I was, it was the first airline I was loyal with. And I think it might've been,

it might've been AirTran, which used to be value jet. It was AirTran. Yeah, I remember AirTran. They used to give you like a free, like one way leg for like every four or five times you flew. It was astounding. It was the best loyalty program around. You would get upgraded at the drop of a hat, like,

like everybody was super friendly. It was so great. And I think Delta absorbed them, uh, at some, some point, I think in probably like the last 15, 20 years and AirTran went away, it was very sad for me. Well, we are Delta Loyalists, not to give them free advertising,

but aside from my wrinkle before the Orlando show, they've always done right by me, but shout out to Spirit and Frontier and Alaska Airlines and all the other smaller airlines, because JetBlue, I flew a lot of JetBlue flights, are they still around? I've been on them. Spirit and Frontier and Alaska Airlines and all the other smaller airlines because a jet blue I flew a lot of jet blue flights. Are they still around? I've been on them. I don't Know I don't know. I want to shout out one more though to Midwest was a beloved airline out of Think Milwaukee and one of the greatest things about Midwest was that after the inflight meal

They would bake their chocolate chip cookies. And so the whole plane would fill with the smell of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies you've ever had in your life. They were so good. Yeah, and they went away. I can't remember who they merged with, but they very quickly were, they did away with the cookies.

They're like, no, it costs money. That tracks with my in-laws, Steve and Sharon, have a story about a first class flight they took back in the day from Ohio where they baked the cookies, so it must have been Midwest. Well, the cool thing about Midwest is the whole thing was all one class.

They had huge leather seats. The whole plane was like that. Everybody was treated like first class on Midwest. I love it. Yeah. Down with the whatever. What would you call that? The cattle cars?

No, just classism. Oh, uh. Classism? Classism? Yeah, classism. Make everybody the same. Charge everybody the same. Charge everyone $200 to go anywhere.

But give everybody first class treatment. That's, that's the caveat. Flying was still fairly reasonable up until, uh, uh, I feel like 2020. You mean, uh, cost wise? Yeah. I feel like before COVID you could still like get some pretty good deals. And then, uh, boy, things just went berserk because I don't know the airline industry got hit so hard, but is it also greedflation?

I have no idea. I would say probably yes. I think the answer to most times you say, is it greedflation, is probably yes. Okay. Well, since I said that and Chuck laughed, of course, everybody, that means I just inadvertently triggered and stepped right into listener mail. Yeah, this is a very sweet one from Lou. We're thinking of Lou right now because Lou, in real time, this is just a few days ago,

lost his childhood cat of 20 years. Even though she was old, I knew she wouldn't live forever. It doesn't make it any easier. When I got the news, my girlfriend was out out that evening so I was all alone to process it after some crying and looking through old photos of Toots, by the name of the cat's name. I decided to seek out some comforting voices and resume your episode on dumb criminals. So it was good for something.

Guys I can't stress how much listening to the two of you joke around and chat about these daft stories helped cheer me up. At the start of the episode, one of you even said that you both had a tough week and you needed something silly and listening to that app really helped cheer me up. You guys also helped me when my grandparents died within a few days of one another years ago when I listened to your episode on how death works and in a weird way, it really helped me come to terms with what happened. We've heard about the death episode and grief a lot over the years, so we're proud of those. Hearing you guys discuss and explain death intelligently

in an easy to digest way, interspersed with moments of levity and seriousness when appropriate, really helped me at the time. So I wanted to say thank you. You guys mean a lot to a lot of people. All the best and that is from Lou. Awesome. Thanks Lou. Appreciate it. Sorry to hear about Toots. Yeah, and Lou did not include pictures of Toots initially and I said, Lou you gotta send me some photos and Toots was a beautiful, beautiful, silly little girl.

Well, R.I.P. Tuts. There's one of Tuts kick back in a chair with her legs spread with a seemingly holding a remote control on the couch. Awesome. Kind of sitting up straight. It was very, very cute. Well, R.I.P. Tuts. And thanks again to Lou for emailing us.

And if you want to be like Lou, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. ["I Heart Radio Theme"] Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. ["I Heart Radio Theme"]

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