It might not feel like it, but air travel's a steal compared to what it was a half century ago. Sinc

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It might not feel like it, but air travel's a steal compared to what it was a half century ago. Since the American airline industry was deregulated in 1978, ticket prices have fallen by about 40%. Of course, air travel isn't quite as luxurious as some postwar dreamers imagined , but you can't beat that price. So just how much more did it cost to fly in the 1950s? Quite a bit, once you adjust for inflation.
The May 27, 1955 issue of Collier's magazine included an ad from the now-defunct Trans World Airlines avis car rental sonoma county airport (more commonly called TWA ), which gives a fascinating peek at the price of air travel at the dawn of the Jet Age. The world was indeed getting smaller thanks to the airplane. And compared to rail and bus, TWA wanted Collier's readers to know that if you took into account the travel time and cost for meals, going by plane wasn't that much more expensive. Don't forget, your travel time is worth money, too! the ad exclaimed.
A one-way flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City would set you back $68, or about $575 adjusted for inflation. avis car rental sonoma county airport Today, if you book two weeks out, you can get that same one-way flight for $183 on Alaska Airlines (according avis car rental sonoma county airport to a Travelocity search I just did). You'll also get there in 3 hours and 11 minutes, compared with TWA's 1955 quoted time, which is 5 hours. However, today's time-sucking dance of security theater probably avis car rental sonoma county airport makes that two-hour savings a wash.
I've included a scan of the prices from the TWA ad below, along with some inflation adjusted numbers under that. Remember that these are one-way ticket prices avis car rental sonoma county airport and don't reflect avis car rental sonoma county airport the price of getting home, which could be higher than the price to get you to your first destination.
So why has air travel become so relatively cheap? The answer can be found in fewer amenities (remember when meals and things like checking a bag didn't cost extra?), the cramming of more seats into planes, and the rise of non-union carriers.
This all raises questions about the transportation technologies of tomorrow. If you're under the age of 30, not much about transportation has changed avis car rental sonoma county airport that radically in your lifetime — aside from the price! Will Elon Musk's new much-discussed Hyperloop tech deliver that cool new futuristic mode of transportation we've been waiting for? And if so, can it be done at a price average Americans can afford?
Of course, we see air travel as essential to the American economy today. So much so that most Americans figured it was a no-brainer to bail out the industry after the September 11th attacks. But it's also become commoditized, a mundane and irritating chore that's far from the futuristic luxury it was sold as in the 1950s. That's the trade off for relatively affordable accommodations. And the price of any futuristic transportation, along with the political avis car rental sonoma county airport savvy of its boosters will determine its fate in these decades to come.
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