You might remember that flying… used to be fun.  

——Sh—

Classic moment from the movie Airplane… a comedy from 1980 that couldn’t be made today.  Because of September 11th.   If you flew on September 10th, 2001… your family walk with you to the gate to say goodbye.  Nobody checked nuthin.  The plane had a flimsy  cockpit door with a lock as secure as the one on your bedroom door.

Do you remember this…  sometimes… they’d fly with the door open.  And you’d see scenes like this. 

Ahhhh the slapstick days of air travel … long gone…. and that movie couldn’t be made today.  A comedy about air travel?  Unthinkable… after September 11th  In a heartbeat…. the experience flipped from  fun to a nerve-wracking battle with your patience, steeped in fear that a fellow passenger might be a terrorist.
  
In those weeks after the attacks… the words “this is your captain speaking” were met with applause. Jetliners flying past ground zero would dip their wings as passengers whispered a prayer.

But I am here to tell you flying used to be fun.  No masks… no TSA.  And they used to give you legroom.  It was an entirely different kind of flying.  Or …as they put it in Airplane…. 

I loved that movie as much as I hate flying.  

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