Car ownership and improved air travel, post 1945 Flashcards
What % of the population had at least one car by 1960? two or more?
Where were most of these manufactured?
Why were cars designed to only last two years?
How did cars provide a pleasurable means of travel?
-80% had at least one car in 1960.
-14% had two or more.
-Nearly all of these were manufactured in the US.
-Most were designed to go out of fashion within a year or two, promoting further purchases.
-Spacious new cars with automatic transmission, radios, heaters and air-con. Petrol prices were also low so driving was cheap.
In the 1950s what were Americans who lived in suburbs totally dependent on for travel?
What did cars enable Americans to do in general?
What could Americans watch and attend from their vehicle?
What did the car symbolise for Americans?
Due to this what did large areas of one rural America become covered by?
-Americans who lived in the suburbs were totally dependent on automobiles.
-Cars allowed Americans to tour their country.
-Americans could watch films and even attend church from the comfort of their cars.
-The car symbolised the identification of freedom with individual choice and mobility.
-The ‘open road’ became covered by roads and adjacent motels, restaurants, stores, parking lots and advertisements.
What decade first saw the rapid expansion of the US air transport industry?
What did this reflect?
How many passengers could Lockheed Constellations carry from NY to California in ten hours?
How many passengers used American domestic airlines in 1955?
What year did international airlines take more travellers to Europe than steamship companies?
-The 1950s.
-The nation’s economic growth & aircraft development.
-50 passengers in ten hours.
-38 million passengers used American domestic airlines.
-By 1958 international airlines took more travellers to Europe than steamship companies.
What did the introduction of jet aircrafts make more accessible to Americans?
What did most Americans use during the 1960s to air-travel within America?
By the mid-1960s what % of Americans were travelling for pleasure rather than business?
What did the number of of passengers carried by scheduled airlines increase by 1960-69?
What was the 1960s viewed as for the air transporting industry? Why?
-Foreign travels.
-Planes
-50% in the 1960s were travelling for pleasure.
-Passengers carried by scheduled airlines rose from 56.3 million in 1960 to 158.5 million in 1969.
-The 1960s was the ‘golden age’.
-The major companies grew larger, regional airlines prospered and scheduled air flights brought air service to small communities.
When did the good times end for the air transporting industry?
What was the problem with the time when ‘jumbo jets’ were introduced despite adding more capacity?
What impact did the oil embargo 1973 have? Stagflation?
-The good times ended in the 1970s.
-‘Jumbo jets’ added capacity at a time when the demand was falling off.
-The oil crisis quadrupled airline fuel prices.
-The economic stagflation of th elater 1970s further depressed the airline industry.
What was the Airline Deregulation Act(1978)?
What happened as a result? (1978-83?)
What did the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organisation do in 1981?
What did Reagan do in response?
What net loss did the domestic airline industry suffer between 1979-83?
-The Airline Deregulation Act ended the gov’ts contrl over routes and fares. Airlines were now free to add or drop routes as market conditions dictated and to charge whatever fares they pleased.
-New airlines proliferated as a result increasing from 36 in 1978 to 96 in 1983.
-The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organisation began an illegal strike in 1981, crippling the air trafic system.
-Reagan fired 11,000 strikers, breaking both the strike and the union. But several years elapsed before air traffic fully control fully recovered.
-Between 1979-83 the domestic airline industry suffered a net loss of $1.2 billion.
