There was a time (coinciding with an era of much less widespread affluence and privilege) when flying was a glamorous affair. It was like going to the opera; people dressed for the occasion. Flight attendants were envied their airborne careers.
It was a time when the tail of an airliner was tattooed with a logo in fabulous deco letters that evoked the plane’s own presence. When this aluminum-clad, thoroughly riveted creature swam through the sky with unprecedented altitude, speed, and style, there was a whole lot of nasty stuff happening on the ground. A lot of wrongness. But all the joy-toys of the fly-boys were eye-catching, charming, romantic, dashing. They whispered sweet nothings about freedom, skill, play, and daring. You could make a movie about air travel that was neither cynical nor ironic.
Compare that to commercial air travel these days. It’s relatively cheap, but that’s about all you can say good about it. There’s no excitement in civilian aviation these days. The only thrills to be found now are in military flight. And those involve death. Lots and lots of death.
So it’s tedium or destruction: pick two.
“the tail of an airliner was tattooed with a logo in fabulous deco letters that evoked the plane’s own presence.”
I love how they cross the two words and one is orange colored.