Above the Clouds, Beneath Our Standards
How Air Travel Lost Its Soul
What’s happening at the airport right now hardly stretches beyond this familiar sight: hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people in one sweep of the eye, dragging handfuls of luggage and backpacks, dressed in shorts, hoodies, and fancy sneakers. Everything whispers the modern mantra: comfort before all else. And honestly, we can’t entirely blame them. TSA makes you strip down to essentials, airplane seats feel like tin cans, and the entire process is an industrial funnel for human bodies.
So the surroundings become a justification to abandon “class” altogether. Anything polished is seen as unnecessary or even oppressive. Yet no matter how much I try to empathize with the rationale behind these complexities of boarding a plane, I fail to understand the uniformity of sloppiness. A fine-gauge knit polo is just as comfortable as a screen-printed t-shirt; a cashmere tailored cardigan is as warm as any hoodie; and high-waisted wool pleated trousers with side adjusters offer as much ease as polyester joggers—except the former carry refinement, intention, and a sense of personal dignity.
Clothes, then, aren’t the problem.
The lack of standards is.
People say, “Taking a plane is just like taking a bus—it’s only transportation.” And that’s exactly the issue. If someone doesn’t hold themselves to any standard when taking a bus or simply living their day-to-day life, why would they suddenly elevate themselves when stepping onto a flight? Whether economy feels like a sardine tin or business class pours caviar on a Boeing 787, the mindset remains the same.
I often wonder what mid-20th-century travelers—not Boomers, but their parents—would think if they were transported into a 2025 airport terminal. Because for them, flying wasn’t routine. It was something you looked forward to, something memorable, an event.
Ironically, the golden age of flying didn’t begin with glamour at all. It began with WWII. Before the war, civilian air travel existed, but it was far from ideal: crashes were frequent, weather radar didn’t exist, engines failed, and navigation was educated guesswork. Cabins weren’t pressurized—you flew low, slow, loud, and cold. Glamorous from afar, terrifying up close. (Just ask the tragic story of Carole Lombard’s final flight in 1942.)
Yet the war catapulted aviation into the future. Nations poured money and intelligence into perfecting airplanes—range, speed, altitude, materials, and most importantly, the jet engine. By the end of WWII, humanity suddenly had highly trained pilots, surplus aircraft, advanced engineering, and a global network of runways and navigation systems. All the pieces of the Jet Age were sitting there, waiting.
And then the Boeing 707 arrived—the true catalyst. Fast, sleek, pressurized, and able to fly above turbulence, it transformed a 15-hour slog from New York to London into a smooth seven-hour dream. With service that rivaled concierge hospitality at The Ritz, flying became a cultural event. Combined with post-war optimism, rising affluence, and the global curiosity of the mid-century, air travel became a symbol of aspiration and exploration.
Pan Am, TWA—these weren’t just airlines. They were theaters of elegance in the sky.
Sinatra captured it perfectly in Come Fly With Me:
“If you’re worth anything, you’re going somewhere.”
The Jet Age didn’t just expand the map—it expanded the imagination. Hollywood began filming in Rome, Paris, the Riviera. Italian, French, and German actors became global icons. The idea of the “Jet Set” emerged: individuals who transformed air travel into a lifestyle, a performance, an identity.
Coined in the early 1950s, “Jet Set” described the globe-trotting elite who used jet aircraft as their private playground. Aristocrats, Hollywood royalty, designers, cultural thinkers—people you might spot in St. Tropez on Thursday, Rome on Saturday, Manhattan on Monday, without breaking a sweat or a manicure. The jet engine democratized speed, but not access. Flying was still expensive, exclusive. But what truly distinguished the Jet Set wasn’t money—it was effortlessness. Something you can’t fake. Something money alone cannot buy. They didn’t wear sweatpants on a flight to Monaco—they wore character. Their social grace was a passport. They didn’t try to manufacture mystique—they embodied culture.
The Jet Set didn’t chase fame; fame chased them.
But culture shifts. And the glamour of air travel eroded slowly, then all at once. Deregulation in the 1970s–80s made flying cheaper—an objectively wonderful thing, but culturally transformative. The elitism faded; mass-market tourism rose; once-exclusive destinations became accessible to everyone. And with access came dilution. Standards loosened. Expectations dissolved. By the time the new millennium arrived, society stopped rewarding elegance and began rewarding noise. Influencers in logo-splashed tees, tech moguls in sneakers, DJs on private jets—people with reach but no restraint. Money, but no mystique. Air travel wasn’t about the seat anymore. It wasn’t even about the plane. It was about the mindset, and the mindset changed.
We should absolutely celebrate the democratization of flight. More people seeing the world is fundamentally good. Yet one cannot deny that the cultural standard of flying has thinned to almost nothing.
Look at photographs of 1960s airports—or society as a whole from that era—and “elegance” is the defining word. A gentleman grocery shopping wore an OCBD, flannels, a cardigan. A lady visiting a salon presented her aspirational self. Even the mundane carried dignity. So when the modern argument arises—“a plane is just like a bus”—one must remember: in the mid-century, even taking the bus had standards.
What’s amusing, or perhaps depressing, is that upgrading to business or first class today still doesn’t match the atmosphere of a coach seat during the Jet Age. Which proves the point: it wasn’t the seat. It was the mindset.
Walk through a modern airport. You can empirically observe a culture that has abandoned elegance as a daily virtue. People assume standards are oppressive and comfort is liberation, mistaking etiquette for elitism. But those are false dichotomies. Equality does not require vulgarity. Access does not demand aesthetic annihilation. Everyone—absolutely everyone—can fly with care, intention, and respect for the shared space and the occasion of flight.
Standards were never about money. They were about mutual respect—for yourself, for others, for the moment. You can wear Uniqlo or Loro Piana; it doesn’t matter. What matters is why and how. You can fly coach and still carry yourself like you’re made of history. Elegance has never been about cost. It has always been about character. If you wonder whether this mindset truly existed, just listen to Sinatra’s 1958 album, watch Mad Men, or scroll through mid-century photographs. The evidence is everywhere: a lost virtue that modernity seems to have misplaced somewhere along the entropy.
Air travel once represented aspiration, dignity, and the beauty of going somewhere—literally and figuratively. The question now is not whether we can bring back the Jet Age. We can’t. History doesn’t repeat itself so neatly.
But we can carry its spirit.
Even in a tin can at 37,000 feet.