From 1946: "What's Wrong with the Airlines"

Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our archive. Who hasn't kicked off a summer trip by shuffling through an airport to catch a cramped, delayed flight?Apparently, air travel conditions in 1946 were gruesome too. The airline industry was struggling to keep up with booming demand, and had just discovered the benefits of overbooking. And a plane seat was, "as perishable a commodity as a fried egg or a dry martini." Indeed.


"...For the airlines of the nation are in trouble. Boom business has jammed air facilities from the reservation telephones on through the whole system and into the air. The major airports are getting close to the absolute maximum of traffic that can be handled safely. Whenever the weather gets bad, the specter of mid-air collisions above the inadequate airports haunts the entire industry. The coming winter is dreaded.

Thus indictment of 1946 air travel falls naturally into two counts: First, that it is frequently gruelingly uncomfortable, inconvenient to the point of exasperation, and on short hauls is only dubiously faster as a means of travel. Second, that big-city airport congestion is making air travel hazardous.

In a sense the current airline crisis is a trial of management. The airlines are now big business. They became big business at a time when some of their ablest men were off building the great war records of ATC and NATS or otherwise serving the armed forces. What they face now has little glamour in it. Management confronts a challenge to organizing and business ability. Because of the airlines' new importance in national communications, the degree to which these managements succeed or fail is a matter of proper public concern..."

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/24/whats-wrong-with-the-airlines-fortune-classic-1946/?section=magazines_fortune

watch planes come in and go out. If you knew someone who had flown you were "somebody" at least in my six-year old world...LOL..