As has been said before, funny old thing progress when back in the 1970's we could have flown from Newquay to Heathrow or Gatwick as we pleased and four times a day at that......
What was the price in those days? Be interesting to compare versus inflation for today. The LHR of the 1970s barely managed connections between British Airways' European and Overseas divisions, not sure how easy third party connections were to the world.