The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before its luxury did, dissipating as flying gradually became commonplace.

The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see the world.

Airline glamour never promised anything as mundane as elbow room, much less a flat bed, a massage, or an arugula salad. It promised a better world. Service and dress reflected the more formal era, but no one expected air travel to be comfortable. It was amazing just to have hot food above the clouds.

Because it's cheaper and easier to fly than ever before, air travel is becoming democratized.

What would air travel look like if airplanes were thrown out after each flight? No one would be flying in airplanes.

Furloughing a bunch of air traffic controllers has a pretty easy-to-predict effect on air travel: It causes delays.