re: What was air travel like before 9/11?

It was BYOB.

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Went through security to board. I remember my backpack full of toys getting inspected (as a kid!) because it looked weird in the metal detector.

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I remember coming through as a kid around 1980 with a pirate cap gun I had gotten at Disney World (sort of an old muzzle loading pistol replica) that set off the detector, and security just sort of having a chuckle and saying "let's go ahead and check that."

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Pocket knives under certain size were allowed.

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watch a John Wayne movie called the High and the Mighty (1954).

A man wants to kill the guy who's banging his wife, so he tries to get on a plane the guy is on, with a gun. He's found out, his gun is taken, and he throws a fit.

Eventually he calms down, boards the plane... And the stewardess gives him his gun back.

I was flying a lot before and after 9/11. Talk about some silent-arse flights...the first, probably, 3-months after you could hear a pin drop on every flight...and you looked around and marked each person that looked like they could be any kind of threat. If someone sneezed towards the cockpit, then they were getting their arse kicked.

Also remember having some .223 ammo in a bag that made it with me to Seattle after a flight, so I just left that shite in a hotel garbage so I didn't get on the "No Fly List". I would always get kicked aside for additional screening - was annoying as frick, but I assume it had to do with my dark olive complexion, muscular build, and frequency of travel.

I don't really miss the old days, as I like the extra security, though it would be nice to be able to have family come to the gate...

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What was air travel like before 9/11

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Most of the seats were similar in size to a nice leather lazy boy recliner. You could take your own liquor and beer on there. You couldn't take a full size cooler but something like a playmate was okay. All of the flight attendants were good looking, wore short skirts, and were sexy whores. If the plane wasn't full, they'd sell you a ticket at the gate for about five bucks. Most of the meals were grilled steaks oh, things like that. they actually grilled the steaks on the plane. They had a little vent windows that took the smoke out.

About like now.

Travel in foreign countries would seem similar to what you experience now. The English had enough with the IRA, and later Lockerbie, to know explosive screening and passenger manifests needed scrutiny.

It was not so lax as some describe it here. You still had a metal detector and bag screening, just no removing shoes, belts, etc and no bomb sniffer/see through scanner that slows down the line.