Flight 4
The Rise of Electronic Tickets, Along with So Many Entertainment Options
I opine on how airplanes are on the cutting edge of technology, in surprising and also taken-for-granted ways.
Along with changes in equipment and seats, I have also witnessed advancements in many other aspects of aviation. Let’s start with the tickets themselves that were used to board the plane—and were not issued unless paid for. Back in the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s, my business colleagues and I would have a secretary, or an administrative assistant in more recent years, telephone a travel agent to work out a trip itinerary. Once confirmed and paid for, the tickets would be physically mailed or couriered to our offices. (This was before the wondrous world of the Internet and emails.)
These airline tickets consisted of a series of coupons, with each coupon showing all the flights of the itinerary. So, if you were flying from New York to London, then onto Oslo, followed by flights to Hamburg, then London, and then back to New York, there were five carbon copy coupons in the ticket packet. When you checked in at each airport, one coupon was removed from the packet at the reservations counter. It was easy to tear these coupons, and sometimes they were prone to detach by themselves.
Now, let’s fast-forward to today. When I book a flight from the convenience of my computer or tablet, from virtually anywhere in the world, I simply log onto the website of the airline I wish to fly, choose the one-way or round-trip or multicity itinerary option, select economy or business class, and up pops a smorgasbord of flight options. I click on the flights I wish to book, enter my personal information and credit card information, and then simply click BUY! Less than a minute later, I receive an email confirming the purchase, together with a locator number that allows me to access at any time the flight reservation on the airline’s website. And I use electronic tickets, which are downloaded onto my iPhone, which I present to an electronic scanner as I pass by security and the gate attendants before boarding.
Today no matter what airline one flies, the passenger, whether seated in economy or business class, has a plethora of in-flight entertainment options. When I first started flying early on in my career, the only entertainment one had was the book you brought on board, along with some of the periodicals that could be found at certain pocket-points in the aircraft cabin. True, there were regularly scheduled in-flight movies, available since the 1960s, but these were chosen by the airline executives and were screened for first class alone. It wasn’t until the 1970s that airline movie-watching became more “democratic,” with films screened for all the plane passengers. (But the quality of headphones was still based on the passenger section. First-class passengers received better-made, better-sounding devices.)
In the 1980s, it became common to find multiple screens throughout the aircraft that dropped down from the overhead compartments, and one listened to the audio by plugging in headsets to jacks located in your seats. But the audio was awful, and it was often quite difficult to see the screens because they were small and might be located three or four rows ahead of you.
It was only about 1990 that back-of-the-seat monitors started to be mounted, initially in the first-class and business-class seats. By the end of the decade, however, the monitors were in all classes of service. And suddenly one did not have to view the movie the airline chose to show on those overhead monitors. The passenger could select a movie from a menu of many choices and watch it on a monitor directly in front of you. Over time the quality and size of the monitors, as well as the headphones offered by the airlines, improved dramatically.
Because today when I fly, there is little to disturb me, I try to use my time on board as a great way to catch up on reading. I must admit, however, that with the new large monitors, noise-dampening headphones, and a multitude of movies and music by genre, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to avoid using an airlines’ audio/visual equipment.
Interesting fact: The first movie ever shown on an airplane was in 1921. It was called Howdy Chicago and it was played for passengers aboard the Aeromarine Airways amphibious aircraft. The first regularly scheduled in-flight movie was on July 19, 1961, with TWA’s screening of By Love Possessed, starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was enjoyed by first-class travelers alone.