Oh, the glory days! Ahead or behind?
I remember enjoying mock turtle soup and cordon bleu in a world of red velvet and crisp linen while cruising around 100 ft msl at a brisk 31KT across the stormy Atlantic. A great way to travel; comfortable; and only 3 days and a bit from gate to gate. It seemed like something that could last forever as long as the icebergs and submarines stayed friendly.
On a westbound return leg in the same era, I flew as pax on a scheduled carrier DC8 with only three revenue seats in the main cabin, amid a vast field of empty headrests, overseen by 4 or 5 underutilized stews - though I did my best to chat them up.
As we know, aviation won that contest and grew amazingly over the recent 4 decades of commercial jet service.
But has the game changed again?
The long-haul ocean liners faded because they were incredibly labor-and resource intensive and relatively slow in accomplishing the core purpose of transportation. Yet some ones still orbit in balmy climes for a certain clientelle who enjoy the process as much as the product.
If you run out of other things to keep you awake at night (slim chance these days), ponder the suggestion that commercial aviation may be permanently growing less attractive to a large class of future fares for reasons tied to aesthetics, economics, and efficiency. Lurking in the background as a cheap and easy alternative for them is the rapidly expanding medium of electronic travel through individual and group conferencing on readily accessible networks, computers, and other proliferating high-tech information tools.
I hope someone here will skewer this bothersome hypothesis and definitively put it to rest.