Virginia Postrel believes the airline industry will never recapture the glamour of its early days, no matter how hard it tries:
“When the jet age was new and exciting, flying was a glamorous and sexy endeavor,” the Virgin Atlantic website declared in 2006, pledging “to bring this glamour back.” It’s a perennial promise in the contemporary airline industry, usually offered along with an announcement of new in-flight luxuries or stylish new crew uniforms. But however nice the amenities or attractive the uniforms, the old glamour never returns, because Jet Age glamour wasn’t about the actual experience of flying. It was about the idea of air travel and the ideals and identity it represented.
Jet Age glamour expressed the longing to experience a world of variety and excitement, a fast-moving, dynamic, and diverse alternative to the familiar and routine. We now inhabit the real version of that world, a world glamour advertised and helped bring about. We can never bring the old illusion back. We can only invent new ones, reflecting new circumstances, new possibilities, new desires, and new versions of yearnings that never go away.
(Image via James Vaughan)
The Dish 