A vintage American Airlines ticket from New York to St. Louis shows just how expensive airfare used to be…and how great we have it today in an era of cheap airfare.
Vintage American Airlines Ticket Shows How Good We Have It Today When It Comes To Airfare…
Take a look at this vintage paper ticket on American Airlines from New York JFK, still called Idlewild in 1962 to Lambert Field in St. Louis. The round-trip ticket was $118.80. Not bad, right?
Well, consider this was 1962. When adjusted for inflation, that $118.80 in April 1962 is the equivalent of $1,240.32 in November 2024…
Let’s look at it another away. You can still buy a ticket today from New York to St. Louis on American Airlines and it will cost you as little as $219 if you buy in advance. $219 in 2024 is the equivalent of $20.98 in 1962…
Put simply, for all we like to complain about how “expensive” airfare is, it is so much cheaper today than it once was. This idea of dressing up to fly (because it was a rare and special thing) and why only the wealthy were able to fly makes a lot of sense when using this example.
I’m quite happy, however, that airline deregulation has made it possible for the masses, including me, to travel. I’m thankful that I can hop on a plane without having to give up other things that likely would take precedence if not for the bargain of airfare today. Can you imagine mileage running or even my review trips at those prices?
Sure, complain about the legroom and the bad food, but we’ve got it pretty good today…airfare is dirt cheap.
Fact: New York International Airport opened in 1948 and was called Idlewild Airport. Afer the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, it was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Yea but you had some sweet bastard carving up fresh meats right in the aisle for you. Now you can barely get a small bag of peanuts.
2 totally different worlds when it comes to service.
Not in economy class, though, right?
And I mean folks who want that can fly Delta, right Tim Dunn?
And there I thought DCS was Tim’s secret identity like Retired Gambler and AC. Ever notice that you never encounter Tim and DCS at the same time?
I don’t remember there being carved meats in economy, but you did sometimes get a hot towel to start and/or finish the flight. The beverage carts had every type of juice imaginable. On long flights there was sometimes a cooler full of water, like you might see in a baseball dugout– the cylinder shaped one with a push-button valve on the bottom, that you could self-serve water out of.
You could smoke in your seat, but not the lav. Heck, you could even open the ashtray in your armrest and smoke the butts of cigarettes from passengers before you if you ran out of smokes.
See my comment below. Beef Wellington for lunch on TWA FRA-LHR in 1962-64.
@ Dave … +1 . Even in economy class service was outstanding .
+1000
People behaved better in the 1960’s, I bet.
Travellers were classier and arguments were few if not none.
Plus there were no travel bloggers!!
LOL ..
Another point of comparison – I keep a Pan Am poster by my desk that advertises a “Pan Am Holiday to Hawaii for as little as $290.66 plus tax” dated September 1957. Looks like that would be about $3,261.40 today.
Inflation is the most insidious tax , and it is deliberately caused by government policies .
Meanwhile the Left always always always wishes to increase other taxes .
This is exactly why The Donald is the Only sensible choice for working people . I get nowhere trying to convince because the average Joe in Hawaii does not understand basic arithmetic . One of the most insidious policies of the dems is to allow the small business tax credit to expire next year . A recession will be sure to follow .
Taxes are the equivalent of of driving an auto uphill with your other foot on the brake . You run out of gas before getting anywhere .
Reagan reduced taxes across the board and the economy accelerated .
Economy accelerated during the Reagan era? Have you never heard of the recession of the 1980s? We did not have robust economic growth until the mid-90s during the Clinton era.
I’m sorry, what are you talking about? If you think Trump’s proposed tariffs will do anything to decrease inflation, I have several bridges to sell you.
If you believe Trump’s promises (then you are a complete idiot sucker,) his tariffs will be massive tax increases.
It is scary that you don’t understand that he’s a high tax, gun grabbing Liberal NYC Democrat.
Oh, and he’s a traitor on top of all of that.
You have absolutely no idea what inflation is or how it works, do you?
I want things to go back to pre-dereg. It wouldn’t affect me. I fly for business on someone else’s dime. My rare leisure travel is done on points. Going back gets rid of the trailer trash who shouldn’t be flying in the first place and the disgusting airlines that cater to them. Flying can be wonderful again.
The peak ease in earning airline miles might have been in 1989 when triple miles were common. Miles were awarded by distance, not price paid.
Fly a round trip SFO JFK in economy and earn more than 15,000 miles plus any elite bonuses. A transcon award was 20,000 round trip. TWA offered two economy seats to Europe for 50,000 miles and you could take both yourself within a year. Some transcons sold for $99 each way.
Now a transcon might yield 2,000 miles for a round trip and two economy seats to Europe for 140,000 miles. So 70 round trips needed versus about 3.5 round trips in 1989.
If you’re spending 140K for two economy tickets to Europe, you probably need to think about cancelling your Sky Miles credit card and earn another currency.
And speaking of Kennedy he also reduced taxes. Democrats were a lot smarter back then.
Props to you for knowing that. Most people don’t realize that JFK dropped the federal income tax top tier from 90%. From all the billionaire snowflakes out there whining about paying less than a quarter of that you’d think it was still 90%.
When the top income tax rate was 90%, there were many deductions and tax shelters so that most people at the top tax rate were paying about 25-38% in income taxes. Now, there are way fewer tax shelters and deductions.
In addition, Connecticut had no state income tax. They were the last state to start a state income tax. They promised to only tax the very rich but now CT has one of the highest state income tax rates for everyone.
@Matthew, Do you also compare the cost of electronics between 1980s and now and say its cheaper?
Jet passenger service began in the United States in the late 1950s. You’re comparing beginning of the flying era when hardly anyone flew vs today. Its like comparing 1 GB of Hard disk in 1980s vs today.
showing my age: 1980’s had 5″ floppy disks with around 250kb storage. 1Gb would have been unimaginable. 1Gb didn’t become normal until the 2000’s.
In 1980, IBM released the IBM 3380, the first hard disk drive that could store one gigabyte of data and it cost $40,000. The IBM 3380 was about the size of a refrigerator and weighed 550 pounds.
That’s exactly my point. Flying was not normal until 1980s when deregulation happened.
1GB Hard Drives were relatively common mid-late 1990s. I think the original iMAC in 1998 had a 4GB drive.
In the early 1990s lots of folks didn’t have a home computer, but I had a friend who had a 5GB system in 1992, which was an extreme outlier at that point, and was a commercial setup.
Yeah.. flights are too cheap. Not everyone should be flying.
You used to get a meal, free drinks and could even smoke back then, and your bags were free, even in coach.. You were treated good by stewardesses (not flight attendants), And your fellow passengers dressed nice, not like the slobs today in pajamas and slippers, in fact they wouldn’t let you on a plane if they didn’t like your appearance. I’m old and remember. I would pay more now to bring back the good old days.
But 10X more?
Yeah, easily. I want the return of the UA Businessman’s Special. Steaks, smoking, and no women.
By your own numbers, it’s only 6X more.
Math was never my strong suit.
There’s no math in Matthew…
Tickets in 1930 were really expensive. $300 to fly from LA to NY.
In 1960 the prices went down. Only $300.
Just 30 years later, in 1990, they plummeted to $300.
And now in 2024 they cost a measly $300. Pennies, if you will.
Back then the USA had a functional rail system and Pan Am hadn’t yet convinced Boeing to build the 747 which allowed passengers to fly at a much lower cost so it’s not quite an apples to apples comparison.
I remember the 80’s (a great skit from SNL by that title) and flying was a mixed bag.
I do NOT miss the cigarette smoke residue in the “non-smoking” cabin. You had a selection of old magazines lying around for entertainment. The food wasn’t luxury in economy class but similar to what’s on international economy today (albeit without free alcohol in economy class). I think flying back then was still relatively expensive adjusted for inflation as I recall on Eastern Airlines.
The 90’s was a golden era, particularly towards the late 90’s. The FF programs were generous and qualifying for Silver was easy and good enough for my limited travel.
What we take for granted is the convenience of E-ticketing. Paper tickets were actual currency and an in-law discarded his return tickets thinking he was in the computer and then had to return tickets at full price. Yikes! My wife took a few years to adjust to e-ticketing. Back then, you had to get your tickets via fedex if you got them through an agency and fax a copy of your credit card to them. Online searching was highly limited.
Although George Orwell would have misgivings, I’m looking forward to face-ID allowing a faster check-in and security/passport experience restoring a relatively pleasurable airport experience pre-911.
One thing that has changed not noted is that the FA’s were dressed for glam and acted it making the flying experience similar to going to a play. People generally dressed and acted better to travel and many FA’s remarked that the “democratization” of the airways led to a degradation of the experience. I don’t think that’s totally true in that the culture today has people less well dressed overall.
I’m also looking forward to the implementation of more facial recognition. Global Entry makes it easy to enter the country without even getting my passport out of my bag. If security/boarding/lounge access can all have facial recognition consistently, the travel experience will really be quite seamless. The technology is definitely here, it’s just the will to implement that we need.
Vernon Smith, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, wrote a recent article about inflation in which he concludes: “For those who want a wealth tax, you already have long had it.”
@Dave W … +1 . And the government-encouraged inflation tax is applied extra-heavily on the regular Joes and the poor .
Actually, the argument goes that inflation is a wealth tax, thus hurting the wealthiest more. On the other extreme, those in debt may benefit from inflation. However, high levels of inflation hurt those living paycheck to paycheck. Their outflows go up immediately with inflation. The inflation-related increases in wages lag behind. If you have zero wealth, you’d be OK with, say, 1% monthly inflation if your wages increased 1% a month, just like your expenses. But, it’s more typically pay 1% more each month, a wait a year to see a 12% wage increase.
A lot of the comments here, including the political ones, make me think that a lot of the commentators probably did not live through the days of regulation to deregulation.
We almost always (including this article) talk about how much more expensive it was to fly back then, and inevitably, someone will bring up how much worse it is to fly today as opposed to back then.
Having flown before deregulation as well as after, there is a major point that articles like this should emphasize. Yes, it is absolutely true that it was much more expensive (after taking inflation into consideration) to fly back then, and yes, service was (in general) much better back then.
But the one point that we don’t emphasize is that under regulation, all airlines essentially charged the same airfare for the same route. This is massively important because the only real differentiation back then was level of service. That was the only avenue an airline could differentiate itself from its competition. I remember all the airline TV ads only spoke about how good their service was. Does anyone remember Western Airlines? The Ooooonly way to fly? Yeah, that funky looking bird. Then Delta bought them out(post regulation) and service went a little (not much initially anyway) downhill. So yeah, service was better before deregulation, but there was a reason for that. Level of service was never mandated by government regulation – prices were, so service was your only choice to get more customers.
I think this is a really important point to make when comparing flying back then to now. We really need to remember that the environment (politically, economically, commercially, socially, etc.) was way different than it is now, so to only compare prices is a bit like a foreigner visiting America for the first time, going to Arkansas, then flying home and telling everybody “This is what America is like”.
It’s only a small bit of the whole picture. So to complain about how awful service today compared to back then doesn’t take into account the actual economic picture of the time.
Mr. Klint, I think, if you compare a broad range of inflation-adjusted fares from the time *shortly* before deregulation with fares today, you will discover that deregulation increased fare revenue, rather than decreasing it. Further, since airline employees’ wages have not kept pace with inflation, I suspect airline *profits* have increased substantially since deregulation. In general, deregulation rarely benefits consumers; if it did, industries would not pursue it so zealously.
Where did the profits go, though? Just the C-Suite?
“if you compare a broad range of inflation-adjusted fares from the time *shortly* before deregulation with fares today, you will discover that deregulation increased fare revenue” Do you refer to price per ticket or total revenue? If the former, I doubt it is true. So, could you p out some evidence?
They had to keep the passengers fed & comfortable because the fear of flying on airplanes was normal. Airliners crashed a lot more back then. A lot more.
Will that be SMOKING or non-smoking?
That was not the choice, really. It was a lot of smoke or a little less.
What about the flexibility of the tickets in your comparison.
Buying a full flexible ticket JFK-STL on AA, fare basis YA2AA, is USD1200.48 as of today incl taxes.
Maybe the fare from today vs the 1962 fare are similar when comparing the flexibility?
All AA tickets except basic are flexible and while full fare may be that much, refundable is often just a $100 surcharge each way.
I just looked at an AA flight from NY to St Louis leaving this Monday morning and returning three days later (I think the vintage ticket is a 3-day trip). The economy fare with refund to original form of payment is $828 — not that much less than the inflated vintage fare. Taking into account the downgrade in experience (seat pitch, meal, flight service, and today’s packed planes compared to the old days when it was common to have lots of empty seats if it wasn’t a holiday), plus the fact that the flying time is now 2 hours 55 minutes compared to 2 hours 15 minutes in 1962, I’d say it’s a wash at very best. I understand that a lower refundable fare undoubtedly could be found by choosing different dates and times. But that was one of the pluses of the old system. The fares didn’t change depending on the date or time. They were what they were.
Fact? Yes, but not a FUN fact. After all, the President had to get assassinated for the airport to be re-named in his honor.
Suggest that you re-examine your criteria for ‘fun’ facts.
I have the utmost respect for the late POTUS.
Yes, your point is well taken.
You sound a lot like that jerk who criticized my friends and my celebration at a bar on my birthday because it was anniversary of her son’s death.
In Prospective:
– The CAA wanted the airlines to be profitable and prices were fixed
– Most airline passengers were business or affluent with deep pockets
– Tickets were all inclusive (baggage, meals, carry on, etc) vs. the annoyance of today
– Airlines were also required to serve smaller towns (ie: Monroe, LA) at a loss
– Quality of service via heavy staffing was far superior compared to today’s slim pickings. If in doubt, look at the bottom of the first photo. There is a phone number for each town (big or small) served by the airline.
– Highly margin loyalty programs & credit cards did not appear till the early 80’s; what revenue earned was via ticket sales at this time
– Travel agents sold a large chunk of the airlines tickets with their corresponding commissions. This group was marginalized via the internet in the late the 90’s.
– The interstate system was only 10+ yrs old and not all metro areas and towns in-between were connected forcing the PAX to take the milk run to connect with a small town
– Carter signed the Deregulation Act in ’78, and all hell broke loose
– Some mergers were successful (Republic & TWA) and some disaster (Pan Am & National)
Today, either you go with the big 4 with frequency/reliability or take your chances with anything else.
In summary, you got what you paid for back then.
Something to add to the above:
– Back then, if your flight was canceled, it was not all that unusual to be moved to another airline without asking. When was the last time you got that level of service within the US?
This is pretty much a “I wish we were paying 6x more for hotels today (adjusted for inflation) so they could bring back turn-down service.” No, thanks.
I’m a retired airline employee who worked in the industry pre-and-post deregulation. The push to deregulate the airline industry was driven by the ability to enter, or leave markets at will, without petitioning the CAB, a months-long process that was often unsuccessful. The ability to raise or lower fares was secondary. Today, we enjoy a robust commercial aviation system offering point-to-point services, and choice of carriers that would not otherwise exist. Fares today are almost universally demand-based, so dynamic that in many markets, they change multiple times a day. Air travel is no longer a luxury, it’s a commodity.
And it seems to me, on the whole, we have it better today. Would you agree?
In 1971 I flew Pan AM from JFK on a $200 student fare, which amounts to about $1600 today. Seats were comfortable and food was pretty good if limited but entertainment was minimal (one movie projected on a drop down screen with horrible sounding earphones and a small selection of audio channels that repeated every 2 hours). Overhead bin space was not an issue because there were no overhead bins. On the other hand, passengers were treated like human beings not cattle and/or terrorists.
Going back further in time, as a 12-year-old in the early 60s I flew the same TWA flight from Frankfurt Germany to London several times to go to school. Even on a short hop, lunch was served, and was always the same: Beef Wellington.
I have a vintage handwritten ticket for a tour of Europe my aunt took in 1966. The entire trip, which was guided, included NY to London, Paris, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Holland, back to NY, on Pan Am, totalled $319.00! It was certainly worth even what today’s market would be.
What was the fair in 1978? Fares probably came way down even under regulation. If we still had regulated airlines. I bet the fares would be lower now adjusted for inflation compared to 1978 or 1962. The industry matures and prices come down just like cell phones.
Shows how worthless our dollar has become is the real story.
I grew up in the 1970s and remember well travel with delicious free meals in economy, all the grownups going to the inflight Pub to drink the whole trip, stewardesses that every guy would find attractive, short distances from curbside to gate, quick easy security clearance.
And I also remember most flights were chronically late, made worse by planes returning to the gate to get some late out of breath running laggard (that was hailed as good service!), horrible food in the terminal building while waiting through delays, having to claim and re-check bags between multiple airlines just to visit a smaller city, or travel internationally. God help you if your final destination was really remote. Bored on board? Only 1 movie if you were lucky, no inflight entertainment, just a deck of cards or coloring book. Oh, and you had to go to the travel agent or airline city ticket office during daytime business hours to get a ticket Today I bring my own laptop on board, often dont want to eat, can book a single ticket online to just about anywhere from anywhere globally. To me, today is the true Golden Age of Travel.
Lot of evidence here that hindsight isn’t 20/20.
Wow, didn’t realize how much more expensive it is to fly now for the same kind of service.
Sure, we now have the option of bad service, back-punishing bench like seating, ZERO food and overworked flight attendants who make it clear they have no intention to serve you. Sure, all of this comes for less money but it’s non refundable and non transferable.
But can you imagine today paying a mere $1,200 for the same level of service across the nation (premium economy or business class)? And for this to be fully refundable or transferrable to anyone?
Not today. They really had it much better back then!