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Topic: Upload your random pictures (part 2)
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 04-21-2006 06:56 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Interesting - I was expecting it to be at least five figures in today's money. Comparing like for like (i.e. a one-way trip on the Hindenburg with first class jet travel today), it would seem that the cost of intercontinental air travel has actually gone up in the last 70 years - I looked on Expedia just now, and the going rate from JFK to Frankfurt-Main on Lufthansa is around three grand (British pounds). Given that air travel was an experimental technology in 1936 and that, presumably, the ticket price reflected a lot of research & development costs, that's not what I would have expected at all. Of course it's possible to get across the pond for a lot less than that; but so it was also in 1936 (i.e. by sea, in steerage). Either the Zeppelin Company heavily subsidised its fares (which it might have done as a propaganda exercise, I suppose), or the principle of Moore's Law simply doesn't apply to the cost of aviation.
Interesting also is the serial number on that ticket, if it's an accurate reflection of the number of passenger journeys to date. 4,297 isn't a lot for an airline which had been operating passenger flights for almost a decade (if I remember correctly, the Graf Zeppelin made its first revenue earning flight in 1927). I guess that today's major airlines probably take that many people across the Atlantic in a day (i.e. four or five jumbo jets in each direction).
My calculations may not be very exact, apart from the fact that I had to look that up and calculate around two corners. So there may be some miscalculation there. But if more or less correct, that would be nearly $4500 for a round trip. Still not exactly cheap. There are more factors: even if these exchange rated now and then try to reflect the development of costs, the structure of costs was still very different back then and I think they were generally less people then than there are now who can spare that kind of money. And it's only the fare. If people wanted to stay in style at the other end of the route, they would have to fork out quite a bit more money, so the whole trip would be much more expensive. Also, this was in the mid-30s when the world economy crisis had only recently been brought more or less under control by measures such as Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's massive Autobahn and rearmament projects. I don't think too many people could afford even that kind of money for travelling. That may also be reflected by the low number of actual tickets sold. I remember reading that when the Zeppelin made a trip around the world, all the passengers had actually been invited because nobody would pay whatever that trip's fare was. So it was more an investment. Which didn't quite work out in the end, as we all know.
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