Airlines are no longer as sweet as they used to be

British Airways put a famous chapter of aviation history to bed last month as the Boeing 757 made its final voyage, while Qantas celebrates the 90th birthday of flights to Australia this month. With this in mind, international flight comparison site Skyscanner takes a misty-eyed look at what airline passengers miss the most from the glamorous age of aviation.

Topping the list of things people miss about flights of yesteryear, with a whopping 40 per cent of votes, was visiting the pilot in the cockpit, now no longer a possibility in the age of heightened security measures and quick turnarounds. The absence of boiled sweets being offered on take-off and landing was also sadly missed, taking 16 per cent of the vote, however it seems that what passengers really miss is being left alone; more than one in five respondents missed “not being pestered with sales for lottery tickets or other ancillary products”.

Skyscanner.net polled over 2,500 people on what they miss most about the flights of yesteryear with the following remembered most fondly:

1. Visits to the cockpit
2. Not being pestered with sales for lottery tickets or other ancillary products (21 per cent)
3. Boiled sweeties on take-off (16 per cent)
4. Smoking sections (13 per cent)
5. Pilots wearing hats (four per cent)
6. Orange make-up on air hostesses (one per cent)

Other answers from wistful flyers included “being handed out five-packs of Marlboro cigarettes before touch down”, “free booze”, “a lime slice in my drink” and “the engine roar on take-off – the A380 is too quiet”.

Skyscanner’s public relations manager, Mary Porter, said: “Although the rise of budget airlines is undoubtedly a positive thing in that it has made cheap flights and travel accessible to everyone, provided thousands of jobs and advanced cultural exchange, it could be argued that it has come at a price. We have undoubtedly lost that glamorous era of flying.

“I can still remember my mother dressing my sister and I in special outfits for travel, and we would never dreamed of wearing a tracksuit onboard! There was a definite sense of occasion to flying abroad while nowadays I think it is very much taken for granted; my son will have flown about a dozen times before he has even reached his second birthday and so I doubt very much that he will see airline travel as anything out of the ordinary”.