8 ms·

Perhaps a relevant bit of trivia. William Shatner was on the tv series. John Lithgow remade the same scene for the twilight zone movie. i was never much of a fa

• chatwinra 10y ago
  Cultural connoisseurs will also no doubt be aware that Johnny Bravo covered that episode the Twilight Zone too, except instead of Gremlins, it was Clowns.... https://youtu.be/W-oEQIiKx_U https://youtu.be/W-oEQIiKx_U
• js2 10y ago
  Having seen both the tv episode and the movie episode, my recollection is that the tv episode was superior.
  • soheil 10y ago
    Just watched the tv episode absolutely mind blown. Impossible to not notice these: - they could smoke in airplanes - anyone could just open the emergency door mid-flight - they had triangular paper cups for water - there were curtains running across the cabin on each side - all men were dressed in suit - you could carry guns on the airplane - he wasn't immediately declared a terrorist and shot after plane had landed but instead taken by an ambulance how civil!
    • mc32 10y ago
      By and large, it was middle-middle and upper middle and above who travelled by plane then. They tended to be the kinds of people who typically had some decorum (you mention the suits, so it's clear they are people of some higher status), so you didn't have your run of the mill middle-class and lower-middle class brats on the plane. And people hadn't thought of exploiting the system much --till the 70s when it became democratized and then you had highjackings every week practically and so now we get what we get. That's not a bad thing, but as things gain a wider audience and becomes less of a luxury item things change --kind of like what one sees in online discussion boards and their evaporative cooling effect.
      • drzaiusapelord 10y ago
        A lot of air travel was for work because it was so expensive, thus the suit wearing. You can hunt around for some pictures of flying in the 60s and 70s and fine no shortage of people in vacation gear or 'street' clothes but back then even street clothes were more formal (you'd toss on a sports jacket or fedora without thinking twice about it for even yardwork). A lot of what we see today in photos are carefully crafted PR and marketing pieces. People back then didn't have smartphones to photograph an average cabin, so we see these wonderfully staged photos of a gorgeous stewardess carving up a turkey for a well-dressed and posed family, which isn't exactly something common in flight. Do you really want someone on an aircraft that can jostle at any time holding a carving knife at your neck's height? Also, that's not a plane, its a Hollywood set. You can't open the door mid-flight as the pressurized cabin won't allow you, at least past a certain year when all airplanes standardized on the inward opening door. Everyone is thin and glamorous looking because they're actors. Everyone is well dressed because the costume department made it so (no ill fitting suits or out of fashion dresses and skirts). No crying babies because it would ruin the drama. No elderly people having a coughing fit. No dirty looks if you happen to have the wrong skin color. I also don't see how people smoking is supposed to be this wonderful freedom loving thing. As someone old enough to have been around where people smoked next to you all the time in just about any social setting, it was disgusting and unbelievably rude and entitled, on top of being a major health issue for those exposed to second-hand smoke, especially children. I'm not sure what the GP was implying but you don't want to go back to those days. A recent week in Japan reminded me of my childhood and that aspect of my trip was fairly unpleasant.
        • saiya-jin 10y ago
          people back then were much leaner, especially in US. not that many sugary foods, much more natural daily workout in lives. also, dressing standard were much higher - all my grandparents dress(ed) much better than me. they simply don't have t-shirt in their wardrobe, but proper buttoned shirts for everything including garden work. same when I was backpacking around india - for 3 month trip, you carry around only necessities, synthetic shirts which dry quickly in that super-humid environment etc. practically everybody there had proper shirts and suit pants and shoes - difference with western backpackers was very stark and I felt like a savage there on numerous occasions
    • skyrw 10y ago
      Make flying great again
    • amorphid 10y ago
      By Dad once told me that the smoking section was the right side of the plane. I think that is hilarious.
      • digler999 10y ago
        It's probably not reducing the overall exposure to carcinogens, but there's something to be said for not sitting right next to someone while they smoke.
      • CalChris 10y ago
        I remember it being aft. But yeah, I absolutely choked on planes.
        • aptwebapps 10y ago
          Usually the back third or so and on long flights it was horrible. Also, the cabin pressure in those days was thinner than it usually is now and the air dryer.
          • dingaling 10y ago
            The air was somewhat drier but also of higher 'quality' because less of it was recirculated; most was fresh intake from the atmosphere, heated, passed through the cabin and dumped. The introduction of widebody twins in the early 1980s coincided with increased air recirculation, in order to reduce bleed-air load on the engines, and until the 787 and A380 it was often over 60% recirculated. Ironically the elimination of smoking led to a big increase in recirculated air.
            • aptwebapps 10y ago
              You mean it could have been higher quality if not for all the smoking. I remember it being pretty miserable on longer flights.
      • soheil 10y ago
        Pretty sure William Shatner was about to smoke while sitting on the left.
    • NamTaf 10y ago
      It also cost 10x the price and was worse in just about every safety and operational metric. For all of the 'charm' that's disappeared out of flying, its democritisation has resulted in it becoming like car travel was in the 50s.
      • bryanrasmussen 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure you had lots of leg room in a car in the 50s.
        • ptaipale 10y ago
          Yes. You also had a steering column that would impale you if you crashed into something.
      • akhilcacharya 10y ago
        Like car travel, but significantly safer.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
    • nness 10y ago
      To that point, FastCo has a good article on the "golden age" of flying: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/terminal-velocity/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly-during-the-golden-age-of-travel https://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/terminal-velocity/what-...
    • hkmurakami 10y ago
      I feel like smoking sections were still a thing in the late 80's / early 90's on some Asian carriers. I was really young though so my recollection is questionable.
      • socket0 10y ago
        Even as late as 1995, I remember flying from South Africa to the UK (in the non-smoking section) while the guy behind me (in the smoking section) was smoking extremely smelly eastern European cigarettes. Quite an adventure when you're prone to airsickness.
      • jen729w 10y ago
        I flew internationally extensively in '00/'01 and that must have been just after it was banned. I remember an Olympic flight from London to Athens where the now-standard "you can't smoke" announcements were made, and the signs were all turned on, and the second the wheels left the tarmac fully half of the plane lit up. In the same period I flew Air France, to Senegal if memory serves. Again, no smoking and all that, but the stewardesses all bundled up in their galley, curtains closed, and were puffing away. Bizarre to think about now.
      • drfuchs 10y ago
        Worse still, at the time of this episode (1963), there wasn't even a notion of a "Smoking Section". Smokers lit up anywhere on planes, anywhere in restaurants, anywhere in the office, on line at the bank, in any sort of waiting room, really anywhere in general. The very concept of a "Smoking Section" wasn't a thing until the 70's, and it was years before they were ubiquitous in the US.
        • pivotal 10y ago
          Even as a former smoker, I never really thought too much about smoking sections until my wife was pregnant. Suddenly someone smoking in the wrong area was a threat to my unborn child and really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm all for personal freedom, but exercising this one around others is stomping on their freedom to breathe freely. I'm glad as a society we've moved on from this for the most part.