The Wonder of Air Travel

US Domestic air travel, like many other areas of the world, sees a continuing growth in demand. Ever wondered why? It's partly because it's getting less expensive according to the Air Transport Association.

In 1978, the cost of U.S. airline travel was 8.49 cents per mile, by 2006, without adjusting for inflation, domestic U.S. airline travel costs had risen to 13 cents a mile, 1.5 times the 1978 rate.

By comparison, the Consumer Price Index rose 3.1 times in the same period. The price of a gallon of unleaded fuel increased by 3.9 times from 1978 to 2006; and the cost of a first-class US stamp increased 2.6 times.

It all adds up to the fact that fares have fallen by around half in real terms

Not Everything is Going Up

Over at Evan Spark's Aviation Policy Blog and at Salon.com's Ask The Pilot there's some interesting stuff about how air fares have fallen. In 1939 when when PanAm carried the first commercial passengers across the Atlantic the single fare was the equivalent of £4,000 today – and it was on a seaplane. The Irish stop en route to and from Southampton was at Foynes where, included in the exorbitant cost of travel, passengers were taken to dry land in an open launch with not even an umbrella to keep them dry. At the restaurant in the Foynes terminal building a Chef named Joe Sheridan realized that the passengers frequently needed warming up - Irish Coffee was invented to solve that little problem. When he was asked about his creation of coffee,cream and Irish Whiskey by a passenger “Is that Brazilian coffee?” he replied, “No. That’s Irish Coffee.” The picture on the left shows a PanAm Clipper taking off from Foynes in Ireland.


In 1952 PanAm introduced a tourist class fare of £173 return between London and New York - today that equates to over £3,000. Even then passengers had to pay for their lunch or dinner, which cost three times what it would have in a restaurant on the ground – and we thought today’s no frills airlines had introduced something new.

The picture (above right) comes from everythingpanam.com a really interesting virtual museum on the airline.