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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.
If you put us all together, you get the cast of wings.
I watch a little bit of wings, but not much. It was actually one of those, I don't want to say
unsung, because it was pretty big when it was out, but I think in retrospect, a lot of people
who like say like friends or something like that are missing out on a really great show.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know why it never got its hooks in me,
because it did watch a little bit of it, and the cast was great. Tony Shalube,
Steven Weber, Tim Daly, don't forget Tim Daly and Crystal Bernard.
Yeah, Tim Daly and Weber. Yeah, Steven Weber, the man.
So yeah, anyway, go watch wings, but that's not what we're talking about today. It's not the
point of this episode. This episode is tangentially related, that's why I brought wings up in the
first place, because we're talking about the history of air travel, and it was actually a lot more
fascinating than I thought, Chuck. Really? Because I just, I'm fascinated by this constantly.
There's chunks of it that I love and am fascinated by, but overall as a whole concept,
I was impressed by how fascinated I was by it. Yeah, because you were impressed by your own
fascination. Yeah, I was like, well, I need to go Josh. You really did fascination, right?
So thanks a day for help with this one, and we're kind of just going to walk you in the timeline
sort of way through passenger air travel, not how planes work and not plane crashes and
hijackings and stuff like that. But what was it like from the very first moment,
human beings stepped on a plane for a commercial type flight, and how that's changed over the years,
from food to bathrooms to smoking to like the terms we use to talk about the people who work there.
Right. So we should probably start, if we're going to talk about this, to the very first
passenger airline flight, which was a flight of one human being on January 1, 1914,
from the St. Petersburg Tampa Airport, or I'm sorry, Air Boat Line was a company. They flew across
Tampa Bay. 3,000 people came out to watch this 20-minute flight. The airline was around for three
months. flew about 1,200 people, and if you're wondering how much that cost back then, about
five bucks for a one-way ticket and 10 for a round trip. Which is a million dollars today.
To fly over Tampa Bay. But no, but get this at the time. It was a two-hour steamship ride,
or a 10-hour train ride. So a 20-minute flight was not bad. I would have coughed up some money for
that to save that time. I saw it was more like a proving ground for the guy who created the planes.
But the did kind of establish this concept that people would pay you to fly them around in these
newfangled airplanes. I don't know how much it would have like, how long it would have taken to
really kind of gain ground. Had it not been for the postal service, though. Because with a lot of
things, the US government kind of took the biggest risks and absorbed the biggest initial costs
in researching and figuring out how to establish commercial flight, essentially.
The first international flight was also from Florida, and it went to Cuba, and just put a pin
in this flight. Because this will come back. It was Aero Marine Airways. They ran for about
four years in the early 1920s in Wicker plain seats. I was just curious. Are you scared of those?
Oh, good question. I saw a picture of them, and no, I would have been okay with these.
So it's strictly Wicker wheelchairs. Wheelchairs? Yes, it's the combination of the two.
So all time in wheelchairs. So walking into a pier one doesn't freak you out. No, no.
It makes me think I'm at prom and about to have my picture taken.
Okay. All right. Great. So like you said, the St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat line folded in a few
months. Aero Marine Airways folded in four years. And I mean, the fact that planes had been
invented by then, eventually they would have gained enough ground that we would have
commercial aviation like we do today. But who knows how long it would have taken.
Have the US government not gotten involved? Because like with a lot of other major technologies
that we have today, the government stepped in and took up took on the risk and the initial costs
in developing commercial aviation. And they did it under the auspices of the postal service.
Yeah. Airmail, baby. In May 15, 1918, is when the first air mail flights took off servicing
at the time, only DC, Philly, and New York. And the little side note, it's kind of fun.
They're very famous stamp. And now we talked about it and stamp collecting the inverted
Ginny. There was a printing error and this plane was upside down. And it was a very limited run
of these upside down stamps. So it's one of the most valuable stamps in the world. But that was
commemorating these first air mail flights. It took a couple of years and they opened it up to
across the country. So by 1920, you could air mail something from New York to California.
And it was a big success through the 1920s such that they eventually were like, all right,
now we can go private with this. Yeah. They handed over the job of delivering the mail to private
companies. So now we had commercial aviation, but it was all mail and cargo, right? But eventually,
that evolved into also moving people from place to place. So that's where commercial aviation,
at least in the United States, but kind of around the world really finds its footing. That's where
it grew from. I just find that fascinating. Oh, totally. And I wasn't expecting to find it
fascinating. You really let yourself down, huh? Yeah. So like you said, in the 1920s, they said,
hey, why don't we start flying rich white people all over the country? Because that's exclusively
what it was for a long time, a round trip from New York to LA. And this is not nonstop. There are
lots of layovers to fuel up and stuff like that. It was 260 bucks in the 1920s, which amounts to our
friends at the West Egg inflation website to about 4,600 bucks today. Back then, that was half the
price of a new car. And so it was rich people. They only flew about 6,000 people in the year 1929,
which you know, it was it was very exclusive at first. You had to fly low because the planes
weren't pressurized. So it was a very rocky, turbulent flight. They were very cold because
the planes were insulated. They were incredibly loud. I think the the the tri motor 10 goose. And if
you're a well, I was about to say if you're an aviation enthusiast, you already know these planes,
but I encourage people to become aviation into enthusiasts because there's nothing more fun
than looking up these old planes like the 10 goose. A very, I don't know about how rare, but
I haven't seen that many tri motors in my day. Sure. So it was kind of cool. It carried 12 people
and flew at a 120 decibels decibels at takeoff. Right. Which I saw a chart. And that is louder than
being at the front row of a rock concert. What? Just assumed they were accepting dinosaur junior from
that. Yeah. Yeah. And in my tiny I can vouch for that one too. Right. So it's still really loud,
loud enough that the stewards had to communicate with the passengers using like megaphone. Yeah.
Like the old timey ones that they used to use at pep rallies and you know, the old yeyly days at
the turn of the last century, right? No diet coke. Right. So as you put it flying was really awful.
It was not a fun affair. It was just so novel that people still put up with the cold and the noise
and the puke-ness. But train travel was still like it was more affordable. It was more reliable
because there are tons of plane breakdowns at the time. Basically, something's never changed
is what I took from that. But trains were still kind of like the way to go. It was just flying was just
so luxurious and such a novelty that actually people used to come out and watch planes take off
at the airport. I guess LaGuardia had like a skywalk where people would come and watch the planes
take off. And there would be more people during the like a single day that frequented the skywalk
than flew in or out of LaGuardia. Yeah. That's still a fun thing. I think a lot of cities have either
municipal airports that have like bars nearby. We have one here in Atlanta, the 57th Fighter Group.
It's so great. This is a World War II themed restaurant in Bar where we shot some video stuff
years ago. But it's cool. You can go sit out on a bar patio and watch the planes take off.
And it's a lot of fun. I enjoy it. That was from our TV show where we were doing cloud seating.
I thought it was one of those interstitials. I'm pretty sure it was from cloud seating part.
Yeah. With the baseball game where it rained or the softball game. Oh, you know what? We did both.
We did cloud seating for the baseball game because we faked being in a biplane and flying when it
was in fact just sitting on the ground. And we also, I remember, went over there to shoot an interstitial
on Japanese stragglers because we were at one point wandering through the bamboo on that property.
Yeah. That's right. They have like a World War II jeeps and stuff there.
And we probably did that because our good buddy Chad who made that show could like shoot there for
a hundred bucks or something. So anyway, trains, like you said, were reliable. They were comfy.
People could afford it. Plains travel wasn't really hitting it big at that point. But this is when
it started becoming a thing. So we're like, hey, we need to know how to talk about this stuff.
And so they kind of barred from steam ships as far as the terminology goes, right?
Yeah. And one reason. So yes, you have stewards that were we call flight attendants today,
but that's just like on a ship. There was the captain of the plane, not the pilot.
They call them airlines, very similar to calling them cruise lines. I even saw a picture of
a early plane and they had straight up port holes for the windows on the plane. So I'd never noticed it
before, but it did borrow a lot of terminology. And I think the reason why is because a lot of the
early planes were air boats essentially. They were like like La Guaria is on the water because it
was originally like a marine airport like for air boats to fly in and out. Did you know that?
I did not know that, but I'm not surprised. I found it fascinating.
Yeah, well that very first flight company in Tampa was called the airboat.
Exactly. Yeah. So there was like kind of like a distinction. I think also they were like,
see everybody like cruising on steam ships. This is basically the same thing. The words are essentially
the same. So there you go. Yeah, but these can't sink into the ocean. They'll just fall from
the sky and maybe land in the ocean. Yeah, it's a it's a two-fer.
You mentioned stewards. That was what the terminally changed over the years from steward
eventually to stewardess because the first stewards were exclusively male. In the 1930s, a woman
named Ellen Church came along. She was a nurse from Iowa who wanted to be a pilot but was not
able to because it was in the 1930s and she was a woman. So she said, all right, I want to change
the way the game is on the plane then and let's get rid of these male stewards and bring in the stewardess
which was the name that lasted all the way up until the late 1970s when the term flight attendant
came along. But as someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s says you did, it was not
it took a while for flight attendant to catch on. I would say it took a good 25 to 30 years before
it was you just did not hear the word stewardess anymore. Yeah, and you'd still hear it occasionally
from some of our boomer relatives. So Ellen Church, she was a pioneer groundbreaker. She worked
for Boeing which became united. Didn't know that. It answers a lot of questions though. And she hired
Boeing's first eight stewardesses. She only flew for I think like 18 months a year and a half because
she was in a car wreck and went back to nursing. But she that was it like the the genie was out of
the bottle because I think we talked about this in our flight attendant episode. The premise was
if you were on a flight and there was a woman there, she would have a calming homey influence.
But also there was like a subtle dare like are you going to be such a sissy that this woman is able
to fly and you can't because you're scared. Come on. So like all that combined just opened the door
for stewardesses from that point on. But not women pilots, not for a long time. Yeah, and one thing
that we didn't mention that is a huge huge deal was not only was church a nurse, but she recruited
other nurses and all of those first eight stewardesses were nurses and almost all the early flight
attendance were nurses. Right. And you know the idea again not just you know besides being a woman
that can help reassure you, but a nurse that's on board is really going to help reassure you because
they just have that. A nurse has got to have a good demeanor. Got a good bedside manner or in this case
first class seat side manner. To me, I find it less than reassuring. It's like well what all
goes on planes that you need a nurse on them at all times. You know, you're overthinking it.
I would have backed on too. I would have old time you overthought it. Yeah. So those were the early
flight attendance these these women who were nurses. But again, church could not become a pilot
because they didn't allow that for cheese probably another 40 years after she came along.
The first woman pilot commercial airline pilot I could find started flying in 1969. Her name was
Tury Witterruh who flew for Scandinavian air systems, SAS. And then four years later in the United
States Emily Howell Warner started flying for Frontier and Bonnie Taberzi in the same year in 1973
started flying for American. And Warner became the first captain not just pilot I think in 1976.
So it took a little while for women to make it out of the cabin to the cockpit.
Yeah. And we should point out too that Bonnie Taberzi, that was her name right?
Yep. She was a pilot at 24 years old.
That's disturbing to me. That that that disturbs me today and it would disturb me even or maybe
it would have been more believable back then. But definitely. I'm not trying to be ages. But if I see
a 24 year pilot getting on my Delta flight, I'm just inherently a little bit freaked out.
It's probably wrong of me probably showing my age. I just want a little bit of experience, you know?
Yes, but I think the ages are different. I think back in 1973 a 24 year old was a kind of like a
50 year old today. No. I'm just trying to make you feel better here.
Well, how would you feel? I don't know. All of a sudden I feel like I'm in a 24 year old.
An ages jerk for worrying about that. Do you think most people or would you worry about that?
If they were like the captain, well, she was a pilot at the time.
The pilot at least. I mean, if there were other people who were older in there,
I'd feel better. If it were just the one 24 year old, I'd be nervous.
If they brought their money. And they would have little to do with them being 24. But there's only
so much experience you can cram into those 24 years. That's what I'm talking about. It's
experience. I have nothing. It's 24 year olds. But unless they're like, no, they started flying,
you know, pros and maybe when they were seven, yeah.
They're child air prodigy. Anyway, 24 seemed young. I just thought that was funny.
Have you realized that we haven't taken a break yet? No, but it's the perfect time to.
Yeah, it's fascinating. All right. I'm going to go think about what I've done today. And then
we'll be right back.
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On a summer night in Paris, American artist Lee Krasner is drifting off to sleep when the phone
rooms. On the line, news that her husband Jackson is dead. Jackson, as in the painter Jackson
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the story that we've been told about him is just that. A myth. On Death of An Artist,
Season 2, Krasner and Pollock, the story about how the art well changed forever.
And the story of the artist who reset the market for American abstract painting. Just
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on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the Hit Podcast Family Secrets. Imagine this. Your parents
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So Chuck Believer or not, we've only made it to the 1930s.
The whole thing really kind of started in the 20s and get this. So you said in 1929,
6,000 people flew in that entire year. Yep. Less than a decade later, 1938, more than 1.2 million
Americans alone flew every year. So it had really started to open up in the 1930s.
But it was still business travelers typically and wealthy people.
Yeah, absolutely. And the planes, you know, and this is why people started flying more.
Things got a little bit better. Still cost a lot of money, but it was a little more comfy.
And 33 Boeing came out with the dual prop 247 gorgeous plane. This had an insulated cabin.
It was the first one where you weren't freezing. Had 12 cushioned upholstered seats. It had hot
and cold water. It had food service. And it was just it was a step up. And this was in 1933.
Yeah. Yeah. And then I think you're right. I think that's why air travel became more
popular because the plane just got nicer. After Boeing released the 247.
