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.

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

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.

A world with a sudden limit on air travel would be tremendously different from the one we live in now.

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

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