juddles
Suspended
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2011
- Posts
- 5,283
- Qantas
- Platinum 1
Hi all, I start this just through a sheer personal feeling, but I thought it may evoke tender memories in those on the forum that have been in the game for a few years.....
In my life time air travel has truly changed. I am not really old, yet certainly not young, and the changes in my experience have been monumental.
When I was growing up, air travel was a thing of the rich, not the masses. Almost noone flew domestically - we all traveled on buses. And the concept of middle-income people having yearly trips overseas (like Bali) was simply inconceivable. but that is the new reality.
I learnt to travel when in my teenage years I had to navigate between Sth America and Australia solo - and there was no internet, mobile phones, perpetual and secure comms. You literally had to write physical letters that would take months to bridge the pacific abyss.
When you bought a ticket you got a wad of paper travel vouchers - again, no internet or e ticket wonders. You respected the novelty of being able to cross borders.
In hindsight it was much harder to do, but at the same time it reflected the seriousness of what you were doing - travelling across the globe and crossing borders. Things have been made so simple now that I suspect that few even think about these things - they take the globe to be their personal playground within which they have some sort of "right" to play in. And I see this reflected in expectations in all modern travel. But I also see the modern views as flawed and ridiculous. The world is not a playground for those afluente enough to cruise it - it has problems.
Maybe some can remember what it was like just a decade or two ago?
In my life time air travel has truly changed. I am not really old, yet certainly not young, and the changes in my experience have been monumental.
When I was growing up, air travel was a thing of the rich, not the masses. Almost noone flew domestically - we all traveled on buses. And the concept of middle-income people having yearly trips overseas (like Bali) was simply inconceivable. but that is the new reality.
I learnt to travel when in my teenage years I had to navigate between Sth America and Australia solo - and there was no internet, mobile phones, perpetual and secure comms. You literally had to write physical letters that would take months to bridge the pacific abyss.
When you bought a ticket you got a wad of paper travel vouchers - again, no internet or e ticket wonders. You respected the novelty of being able to cross borders.
In hindsight it was much harder to do, but at the same time it reflected the seriousness of what you were doing - travelling across the globe and crossing borders. Things have been made so simple now that I suspect that few even think about these things - they take the globe to be their personal playground within which they have some sort of "right" to play in. And I see this reflected in expectations in all modern travel. But I also see the modern views as flawed and ridiculous. The world is not a playground for those afluente enough to cruise it - it has problems.
Maybe some can remember what it was like just a decade or two ago?