Anyone remember when airlines had "city ticket offices"?

[Astro14]

There was a time fifty or so years ago when you could book a flight by calling the airline on the phone and then paying for it, with a personal check, at the airport when you showed up for the flight. Airlines published system timetables which were given out at the check-in desk and those listed flights with equipment used and fares.
Then came the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Maybe twenty years later, a networked world brought the advent of e-tickets followed some years later with the near death of any paper tickets.
There were a number of start-ups in the early days of deregulation, People Express being a large example. The legacy carriers couldn't match their fares, or maybe they could. Bob Crandall's American Airlines originated the concept of yield management which did allow them to offer at least a few seats on competing flights that matched the fares offered by the start-ups, which had the outcome of killing off the rather poorly run start-up carriers, who also had nothing like the IT infrastructure to support any sort of yield management. After all, this was an era in which most flights went out with lots of empty seats, so getting some money for an otherwise unused seat was gravy.
My how things have changed and we now have the cheapest fares on a constant dollar basis that we've ever seen as well as some of the highest load factors and everyone searches for flights online and books there as well.

My Dad flew 250,000 miles on United back in that era. Late 1960s. I have the bronze medallion they sent him for achieving that milestone. The seats were bigger. The utensils, steel. The meals, quite nice. No extra fees. No charge for checked bags.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? It was, it really was.

People dressed up for air travel. You wouldn’t see denim on an airplane and you certainly wouldn’t see a gentlemen in anything more casual than a blazer and tie.

What people forget, when looking back on the 1960s, is that each one of my Dad’s tickets cost about as much as the brand new 1968 Ford Country Squire he bought.

Air travel is nothing like it used to be.

 

[y_p_w]

My Dad flew 250,000 miles on United back in that era. Late 1960s. I have the bronze medallion they sent him for achieving that milestone. The seats were bigger. The utensils, steel. The meals, quite nice. No extra fees. No charge for checked bags.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? It was, it really was.

People dressed up for air travel. You wouldn’t see denim on an airplane and you certainly wouldn’t see a gentlemen in anything more casual than a blazer and tie.

What people forget, when looking back on the 1960s, is that each one of my Dad’s tickets cost about as much as the brand new 1968 Ford Country Squire he bought.

Air travel is nothing like it used to be.

Was it really that expensive? I looked it up and a 1960 Country Squire was at least $2,500 or so. I looked around for an old ticket and this one says it was $54.07 although I'm not sure if it's in US dollars.

I guess those were the days of flying into the Pan Am Worldport at Idlewild. Must have been interesting with those turbojets.

 

[Astro14]

My Dad’s tickets, from Winnipeg, were well over $1,000, often $2,000, in 1968.

You’re welcome to run the inflation calculator on that. I was trying to convey order of magnitude, but yeah, pretty close to the cost of his new car.

 

[y_p_w]

My Dad’s tickets, from Winnipeg, were well over $1,000, often $2,000, in 1968.

You’re welcome to run the inflation calculator on that. I was trying to convey order of magnitude, but yeah, pretty close to the cost of his new car.

I was actually surprised to find about a $55 fare from some random town in Ontario to Springfield, Mass. I thought it would be more.

I tried pricing the same trip now, but can't exactly. No more Springfield Airport. There is something close in Timmons-Toronto-Hartford. Cheapest fare I could find was $320 (USD). Not bad accounting for inflation. Would involve flying on a Dash 8, and those things kind of scare me.

But I suppose the consensus is that it's cheaper than ever to fly.

What Flights Used to Cost in the 'Golden Age' of Air Travel

Flying is actually cheaper and better than it's ever been.

www.travelandleisure.com

The Evolution of the Commercial Flying Experience

Learn more about the evolution of the commercial flying experience in the United States using objects from the Museum's collection.

airandspace.si.edu

 

[borgward]

Obviously the need for them is less with online purchasing, online travel agents, and e-ticketing. But I remember them well.

A relative of mine was a travel agent and he would often visit them to handle special requests or pick up tickets that for one reason he couldn't pick up himself. Some used to be in prime locations. For whatever reason I remember China Airlines (Taiwan) had one at a corner location at Union Square in San Francisco that's now a Starbucks. I also remember this relative arranged for some buddy passes on Air New Zealand from an ANZ employee that we used to fly to Australia. It was a reward for selling a lot of tickets. It was weird too because ANZ didn't fly out of SFO but they had a ticket office in San Francisco and we flew out of LAX.

A friend of mine had to rebook a United flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and the change fee was paid for and the receipt collected at United's ticket office in Shanghai.

There was one at Penn Station in New York City. I understand it was from United's partnership with Amtrak, which has since dissolved. I heard it was the last city ticket office United had.

Back when you went to the airport and bought you ticket at the counter, I learned to find which airline did no go where I was going and ask for a ticket to where I was going. They would sell me a ticket on the other airline at their lowest price. That was way cheaper than going to the other airlines counter.

 

[c502cid]

Actually, airfares are dramatically cheaper than they were in the days of city ticket offices.

Airlines have cut staff, and that has reduced some costs, just as others,
like labor, aircraft, fuel, and gate access have gone up - but the customer now has access to a great deal more information than the city ticket office ever did.

Real time updates. Self rebooking. Real time bag tracking. Flight tracking. Gate change updates. Weather updates. Information that was once proprietary is now shared.

You’ve been granted access to an incredible array of information.

None of that is available to you on paper.

Your choice to remain in the dark. Even my 85 year old mother books, tracks her flight, checks in on line, navigates to the gate, shares her flight, via the app on her iPhone.

Welcome to the Information Age.

The half concourse length lines from the customer service areas at DEN during irrops say it's not that simple my friend.

 

[SC Maintenance]

In the late 90s, I was given some vouchers for being bumped off a Northwest airlines airplane. I had to go to their city ticket office to book them for some reason or another. I didn’t actually know they had such a thing, it was in a strip mall, not too far from the airport.

I also made my first business air trip shortly out of college in around 1997. I was traveling with a senior manager, and he came by my desk to make sure I was to wear a suit and tie on the airplane, and be polite to everyone, because I was representing the company, even though no one would know whom I worked for? I would’ve been polite anyway, but a suit and tie was interesting, considering I didn’t have to wear one in the office, and we didn’t wear one once we got where we were going, just on the airplane.

 

[Astro14]

The half concourse length lines from the customer service areas at DEN during irrops say it's not that simple my friend.

I’ve spent hours helping folks in EWR during a blizzard. My flight canceled. I was off the clock. Didn’t have to help. Couldn’t walk past those hundreds of people.

I’m familiar with how quickly things can go wrong. But we have gotten far better at anticipating and handling those kinds of big weather events.

That’s an area where we’ve spent hundreds of millions to improve system reliability, customer service capacity, and agility. How we handle those situations has been markedly improved.

DIA was running well last Thursday when we landed, on time.

And for me, in irrops, or when things go sideways, I've been able to rebook, quickly, on the app.

That happened to us in January, when we flew ORF-DEN-PHX and the first leg delayed for four hours on a mechanical.

I rebooked the connecting leg on the app.

 

[y_p_w]

Having tagged along with the travel agent relative, I remember doing things including going to the airport quite often to see him working with large tour groups. This was back when anyone could get through security, although they did have metal detectors and sometimes pat downs. I tagged along at some of these ticket offices, and some were fairly small in the upper floors of office buildings and not the highly visible storefront locations.

I found an article on them.

The Death of the Airline Ticket Office

Airline ticket offices used to be ubiquitous across the country. What happened?

www.cntraveler.com

This might have been the biggest airline ticket office in San Francisco's Union Square. They probably didn't take up the whole building though.

The article mentioned that there are actually ticket offices in Havana. Apparently American, Delta, and United have them. Makes sense with a mostly cash economy.

 

[c502cid]

I’ve spent hours helping folks in EWR during a blizzard. My flight canceled. I was off the clock. Didn’t have to help. Couldn’t walk past those hundreds of people.

I’m familiar with how quickly things can go wrong. But we have gotten far better at anticipating and handling those kinds of big weather events.

That’s an area where we’ve spent hundreds of millions to improve system reliability, customer service capacity, and agility. How we handle those situations has been markedly improved.

DIA was running well last Thursday when we landed, on time.

And for me, in irrops, or when things go sideways, I've been able to rebook, quickly, on the app.

That happened to us in January, when we flew ORF-DEN-PHX and the first leg delayed for four hours on a mechanical.

I rebooked the connecting leg on the app.

You rebooked. Not everyone can as evidenced by the lines, even in the United Clubs.. Sometimes it won't let me, and I'm a 26 year 1K and a 2.4MM. The app has improved things in a lot of ways, but overall UA customer service is going the wrong way...fast.

You mention you helped customers during a blizzard. I've bought hundreds of cups of Starbucks for gate agents working the long lines with people yelling in their face. It is what it is, some of us try to make the better of the situation. Scott Kirby has created a lot of unhappy employees and customers. And it shows.

 

[y_p_w]

In the late 90s, I was given some vouchers for being bumped off a Northwest airlines airplane. I had to go to their city ticket office to book them for some reason or another. I didn’t actually know they had such a thing, it was in a strip mall, not too far from the airport.

I also made my first business air trip shortly out of college in around 1997. I was traveling with a senior manager, and he came by my desk to make sure I was to wear a suit and tie on the airplane, and be polite to everyone, because I was representing the company, even though no one would know whom I worked for? I would’ve been polite anyway, but a suit and tie was interesting, considering I didn’t have to wear one in the office, and we didn’t wear one once we got where we were going, just on the airplane.

I've never been bumped. But my travel agent relative said to never volunteer. Said that they had to give cash to bump for the most part unless they can get you there less than an hour later than scheduled.

I think I wore a suit an a flight once in my life. It was that job interview I just came back from, and I got a van service ride from the interview site to the airport and I had no time to change.

But on business trips, I never dressed up. I never had to dress up much working in Silicon Valley and similar environments. The most I ever had to wear was "business casual" when I was briefly in a customer facing role.

My first business trip I wasn't really required to do much. A bunch of us were sent to the big electronics trade show. Unless working at a booth or suite, all we had to do was look around. We even went around and looked at our biggest competitors, where we even handed out our business cards (I even ended up getting a call at work from someone wanting to recruit me). But like many I wore sneakers, jeans, and a crewneck sweatshirt. We did do some favors for our colleagues who actually worked that trade show, like helping to pack the stuff in the booth to bring home. The reward was supposed to be a really nice team dinner and I was told that I should at least dress in something with a collar like a polo shirt and khakis. I put it on just before dinner and someone said they'd never me dressed that nicely. But the other favor they asked of me was to bring back some very delicate electronics and under no circumstances was I supposed to allow it to be checked in. And it was an absolute zoo at the airport and on the plane. On my flight back (on Southwest) the overhead bins were absolutely full, but I checked in what was my outbound carry-on, carried on the electronics in roller, and brought a couple more bags. And Southwest staff didn't seem to care where there were full overhead bins and people just stuffing their stuff everywhere. Those were the days.

 

[wpod]

I remembner there was a tick office in San Francisco on Mission ot market street ot in the area by city hall, Airline and trucking deregulation still in my opion was a bad move.