Well stated! Exactly why I took early retirement from TWA just before my 54th birthday, even though I was a senior captain.

I heard that so many times, and usually it's just b/s. Follow the "but" with "I couldn't be bothered to make the effort" and you'll get nearer the truth.

Remember the glamour of race car drivers being decapitated? Burned alive? Broken necks? Or when drinking and driving was more acceptable? Along with no seats belts, no head rests and lower seat backs that increased the odds of a broken back or neck? The good old days, we should miss them.

It was fun being young, with an low tech jet by today's standards, and flying with young single women. But miss the professional, technical, and safety standards of years ago? No thanks.

If someone wants to relive the 'good old days', if you can find a DC-3, DC-4, or DC-6 that doesn't have modern avionics or radar you get to experience the full retro event. No using satellite or radar for plotting routes. No delaying or cancelling a flight using *today's* standards. For the full experience of the 'good old days' you need to replicate the entire experience. And not just on a good weather day. Try it for 800 hrs, in all weather, in all seasons, and report back. I think few would choose the past over the present.

Years ago the filed routing was A to B to C than D. Every single flight, every single day. Today, using modern weather tools, I'm flying the same route but up to 500 nm east, or west, of the old route. And with real time, world wide, weather tools available in the cockpit along with data link and SATCOM communication abilities to a dispatch system light years more capable than it was years ago. And the engine failure risk has gone down from 1 in every couple of hundred hours to 1:1000's or 1:10,000's.

A friend has a 1960's V-8 muscle car. Stock. "It's a blast but it's a death trap. Steering is terrible. Brakes. Tires. I just putt-putt around town in it."

I'll take the lack of glamour days any day of the week.

Glamour days - "don't trust a guy who doesn't loosen his tie in the cockpit."

I had to think about that - wait a minute, *I* don't loosen my tie! But I used to...why did I change? And then it dawned on me, on newer technology jets (roughly 1980+, ie 757/767 or later), the air conditioning worked well enough that you didn't have to sweat yourself to death on the ground. So the tie is directly related to technology advancement and had nothing to do with the individual. Now it's rare to fly with a guy, on a modern jet, that loosens their tie because the air conditioning actually works on the ground.

While I agree that modern aircraft have far superior air conditioning
than their older counterparts I never loosened my tie in either one


The first thing I do after sitting down is to take mine off


One of the delights of not working in an office, I assure you
there’s not much glamour there

I always used a clip-on tie.