Hollywood suggests that the heyday for airline travel was probably in the 1960s, when an air hostess in uniform was the epitomy of glamour and passengers were wined and dined as if traveling in a mile-high, Michelin-starred restaurant.
Sadly, it didn't last. The cost of delivering such levels of service restricted access to air travel mostly to business travelers and wealthy individuals. Air travel, once novel and exciting, lost its luster and airlines were forced to adjust their services to fit the economic realities they faced.
It was only through the advent of the low-cost carrier model in the 1990s that airlines truly became a sustainable financial (and social) success story. Low prices opened the skies to those for whom air travel had previously been largely excluded, leading to passenger numbers more than trebling from 1.4 billion people globally in 1995 to 4.6 billion in 2019.
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