LordoftheHildago
23659
429
3
Jan 19, 2026 4:32 AM
LordoftheHildago
23659
429
3
nitemayr
The color is from the cigarette tar on EVERYTHING.
GreaseMonkeyOfLove
The past had a future.
VastMajorityRule
https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NjNtdmM3cWtsbm4yNGkxMWU0a2JmcXFkOTI1YjgydWg0bGp1cXI0ZyZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/OYTxmrJq3SlBNHtG6q/200w.webp
gummbunn
That middle seat tho...
LogicalLimes
All of them. 😂
akambe
Ah the Whisper Liner. The absolute best passenger jet to be haunted by departed air crews.
MCFLYYY
This is called competition, companies used to have to compete with each other to earn business. Making your product good, and in this case "futuristic" was a way to draw in customers. Now with all the consolidation and "cooperation", nobody has to compete anymore and it's a race to the bottom for quality.
Krashtestdummy
wejustdontknow
https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1dThtazBwZDVidWVrdjI5YzRrYjJ3M2s1YXBhM3p1cnJjbGd0NGltNSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/4bWWKmUnn5E4/200w.webp
RexMundane
Like the man said, the future ain't what it used to be.
MattLefferts
This is before enshitification levels really peaked.
OrkenMork
That L1011 was a wonderful wide body jet. The tri-engine setup made it look so sleek and it was so darn quiet in the front cabin parts of the plane....it's my second favorite plane after the 747!
fbutaric
Unless you had to maintain it. Always some issue especially the rr engines
OrkenMork
Yeah...I love to tinker on things and am a bit of a "shade tree" mechanic, but I would never want to work on a Jet plane or a Saturn V rocket...Nope...not for me thank you!
JohnSmithterms
We taxed the rich 92% between 1944 and 1964 .... it all started going to shit after that.
Kc0125
Were boomers too stupid to make the future they promised in the 80s or too selfish to care?
9z2nf02h
Retro futurism looks like the future because it's retro futurism. We have no idea what the future looks like.
gwaur
Check out the ICC Berlin conference center. Its interior is exactly what you'd see in Star Trek. It's mindblowingly cool and futuristic in a tasteful way. I'm sad that those kinds of buildings aren't built more.
DerpMeister
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was a financial flop and led Lockheed to stop producing civil aircrafts.
Fargus57
It was like like the Betamax of airplanes. Superior to it's competition in every way, except in sales. L1011s were the best to fly on.
MarkSoupial
crazy how deregulation do that
medimr
The future must smell like cigarette smoke.
ePluribus
Ever seen the movie Millennium? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097883/ ;)
LogicalLimes
That movie is so terrible. I don’t know why I’ve watched it at least ten times. hahaha
ePluribus
Ditto. Maybe because despite the deplorable, even for its day, SpFX... it actually had a somewhat interesting plot. For its day. :D
ExTechOp
It's a shame the movie was so bad, the original book was pretty good.
ePluribus
'tis always the way, no?
dingybasement350
People who think the book is always better than the movie haven't read enough books or seen enough movies.
ePluribus
I've done plenty of both... and I enjoy the immersion of a book, and the visual stimulation of a movie... but there will always be one medium that tells the story better than the other. I find adventure/action is better in video for me, while drama and character-driven stories are easier for me to get immersed in via books.
ExTechOp
Contrarily, Peter Benchely's Jaws wasn't a super read, but the movie is a classic.
There are also good movie versions of good books, for example I think Peter Jackson's LoTR movies are about as good as is possible to derive from the books.
ePluribus
-heh- I love it when peeps drop that as an example... as I was an accidental background extra in the trilogy. One of the perks of living here.
ThailandExpress
Same with Ludlum's Jason Bourne books. They were god awful but the movies were great!
NotAllowedToArgueUnlessYouPay
Plenty of big airliners today. More prevalent than back then, assuredly, and plenty modern.
Drives11
Yeah but that doesn't feel as futuristic as op's photo
NotAllowedToArgueUnlessYouPay
Why do you think so? The outdated fluorescent and incandescent lighting? The wasted overhead space? The awkward 5-across seating?
UseYourVoice
I wish warm, earthy color schemes like this would make a comeback.
erinaceus
i havent flown in years. is this not the norm anymore?
dohcohv
More overhead storage and cheaper flights. Being able to instantly compare prices across all airlines and the rise of budget carriers like Southwest put enormous pressure on prices. When your flight doesn't get chosen because it's $2 more, it leads to extreme cost cutting.
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
The UK and France had Concorde.
Shawnofavitch
Steak dinner, drink and drown champagne. The armrest folded up in those middle seats, you could lay down. Large screen projector movie. Nobody was ever in a bad mood. Back when it was fun to fly. Really fun!
BobbyBobbyBobbyBabyBobbyBooby
I hope companies start pushing innovation over profit again- and NO AI doesn't count as innovation.
NickNoltesDrinkingShack
I feel like that was more of a promise back then. They'd do their ads and mention their commitment to innovation.
MarkSoupial
no company pushes innovation, they are given incidental technologies from NASA and MIT and privatize them.
RedStarVidal
Its true, my mayonnaise sex jar was a hand me down from a multi-billion dollar venture between NASA and PROBEE (Public Racey Offworld Beings Extraterrestrial Exploration). Elon is still mad that Xenu of Planet nine gave the jar to me for privatisation. And privatised it I have ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
4etherling
I feel like you could write white house policy. I'm glad you're on our side.
RedStarVidal
Yes, I was close to making it mandatory that all ICE applicants had to pass my gun safety class. The class consisted of me chasing them with a helicopter gun in the new White House ballroom. Only those who survived could be employed. Sadly, the idea fell through due to the rising cost of coffins.
RedStarVidal
And the helicopter guns efficiency....
Ree81
I hope the collapse of civilization under the idea that "all growth is good", is quick so we won't suffer too much.
buttcreambandit
It used to be that companies that didn’t spend money on r&d and expansion lost the money in taxes. But now we don’t tax corps
sunyudai
Can't innovate when the day traders want to see cost-cutting measures today.
thatsbadmmkay
The us economy is structured in a way that companies will enshittify everything while charging more until forever.
DrKonrad
I have to disagree, "NO AI" would be a great progress
CyberHexx
Innovation is risky and there's still a few pennies to be squeezed out of your already emaciated childhood nostalgia.
neuronicle
Well, actually that unregulated capitalism in the picture, that made millions and millions of tons of burned kerosine and gas every day just for leisure and work travel a normal thing, contributed hugely to the creation of our nowadays reality. The billionaires are greedily pushing it since the late 70s and early 80s and too much of us are conveniently not resisting. So no reason to romanticize any of that unless you don't like thinking critically or facing facts.
Grimmrog
all went backwards when capitalism had to offer a better Life than communism. When the soviet communism collapsed, capitalism finally showed its real face.
WebMaka
IMO it was more a case of capitalism being reined in sharply by politicians that still had some form of conscience. Then the capitalists simply bought the politicians and they in turn ended the restrictions that kept capitalism in check, and here we are with it in full unrestrained predator mode.
JimiFloyd2
Hendlton
According to Wikipedia: 250 built, involved in 35 "aviation occurrences" including 10 hull losses, but also "had comparatively few accidents and a better safety record than its competitors."
Don't know about you, but I don't like them odds...
Mitheral
Airline travel was a lot more dangerous 50 years ago.
parabolic000
I vaguely remember being like 8 or so on an underbooked flight, and I was able to just lie across the center seats unimpeded. Also trading Game Boy games with a kid in a row before me. He played Kirby, I played Tetris.
Exyr
Damn that actually looks comfy
ePluribus
It was. Unless you were the poor sod in the centre seat and needed to pee during the sleep period of your long-haul flight. Or if you were seated between said person and the aisle. :'D
Idontneedrealfacts
The food on those flights sucked so bad it took your mind off the fact this photo is in high def but through the haze of the "smoking section" because yeah, that worked.
BenderSaysNeat
Not only could you be sitting in the middle seat with 2 people on either side of you, you could also not have any overhead storage! But on the plus side you’d have a ton of headroom, which is of course what we all complain about on modern airplanes. Lack of headroom.
implosion3
Ya, they had to add more overhead when they started weighing and charging for checked-in bags obsessively. now people travel with more carry on bags. Tbh I'm fine with that particular evolution. It's been ages since they lost a bag of mine in transit and that's partially because of their advanced scanning and labeling, but also because people check less baggage generally and are more conscious of all the shit they bring from place to place unnecessarily.
AntaNce
I was on an L1011 with the added overhead space, flew through a pacific storm. The whole thing wagged over us, some of the doors popped open
FuzzyX
Clearly that aircraft should have been in a 3x3x3 configuration and not 2x5x2. Losing luggage space seems a bad idea but I do support max headroom...
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1bm81cTdzY2IwcnJuMW12aHIyY3Rld3BnMHZyYXZmbG80d2V3MmphdCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/3oEjHSxRXpXTlzC15C/200w.webp
BarryTheCyborg
I'm guessing luggage was included with the ticket so there was no need for a carry on
FromYourHomePhone
It was so the cigarette smoke had somewhere to go. Those aren't beige-tinted glasses of nostalgia making everything brown...the walls and ceiling used to be white.
aufdie
They didn't charge for checked bags at the time. It's a lot easier to manage weight distribution if you control it rather than letting the passengers decide as a group where your center of gravity goes so they could carry more weight too.
marsilies
Yeah, you didn't need a carry-on when your ticket included at least one checked bag. Still, sitting in the middle of that 5 seat row is a nightmare.
Z0op
Youll be complaining about headroom too when everyone around you in the plane is smoking tho , imo, seriously, why the ceiling is soo high, so the smoke can linger a lil higher
fbutaric
And the people on the side of you could light up a cigarette. This in the last aft section.
Yellowchopsticks
They also used to have more flights that weren't absolutely full though. There was a good chance of finding enough empty seats to lie down.
IhopeUgetwhatUvoted4
It wasn't "extra" to check a bag then so everyone isn't trying to cheat the system by bringing 4 items into the cabin.
CaptCrobar
Thats where all the smoke went from our two packs a day.
FellaWithUmbrella
In the 80’s there was Max Headroom.
AxellTheDragon
NR97420
Take my UPupupup upvote
Snooj
As a tall guy I never give a shit about headroom. It's all about the kneeroom.
HufflePuffPuff
Then you have a short torso
yamsonyamsonyams
Woosh
EddyWantok
As a fellow tall guy, I've found in the past that an economy exit row is far more comfortable for me than many of the business class seats as they don't have anywhere to stretch out for an over 6ft'er. Once flew home from a deployment via Qantas business class with 2 prolapsed discs, I was wishing for the space under an economy seat to stretch my legs.
NotAllowedToArgueUnlessYouPay
I've always thought it would be better to have bunk beds instead of seats. Could go 3 high and everyone could still stretch out.
knotydes
I'm 6"8" flying for me is hell. I have to reserve an exit row or book extra legroom or I legit can't fit. I can't sit in the window seat cuz my shoulder hits the bulkhead and forces me to lean into the middle seat. But the worst is that the backrest is too short, I have to shove a jacket or backpack behind my lower back to get any back support. It's amazing that we made the wonder of flight suck so much
MadamPuddifoot
Well to be fair, those chairs are designed for the 98% of people between a pretty wide height range, you're just an outlier.