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The Airline Passenger Experience
University of Oklahoma Press
June 2009
On Sale: May 30, 2009
260 pages
ISBN: 080613870X
EAN: 9780806138701
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A colorfully illustrated history of air travel emphasizing
the personal experience of commercial flight Americans who
now endure the inconveniences of crowded airports, packed
airplanes, and missed connections might not realize that
flying was once an elegant, exhilarating adventure. In this
colorful history, Daniel L. Rust traces the evolution of
commercial air travel from the first transcontinental
expeditions of the 1920s through the luxurious airline
environments of the 1960s to the more hectic, fatiguing
experiences of flying in the post-9/11 era. In the
beginning, flying coast-to-coast was an exciting yet
uncomfortable journey of nearly forty-eight hours that
required numerous stops and overnight travel by train. With
time and technical innovation, passengers became
increasingly removed both physically and psychologically
from the raw experience of flying. Faster planes,
pressurized cabins, onboard amenities, and stronger safety
precautions made flying more convenient and predictable--but
less evocative and sensational. Prior to the 1980s,
Americans dressed for air travel in their formal best and
enjoyed such luxurious onboard amenities as delicious meals
and ample cabin space. What made air travel glamorous,
however, also made it more expensive. With deregulation in
1978, cost reductions reduced flying to a more tedious, and,
after 9/11, more regimented experience. Rust's narrative
brims with firsthand accounts from such celebrities as Will
Rogers as well as from ordinary Americans. Enlivened by more
than one hundred illustrations, including vintage brochures,
posters, and photographs, Flying Across America reminds
today's airline passengers of what they have gained--and
what they have lost--in the transcontinental flying experience.
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