That's my favorite!

My favorite part of that is that before they decided it was immaculate, people used to celebrate the conception. I bet they had fun party games.

Okay, this is a question perhaps better suited to Literary or GWW, but I figured in Natter I'll get a pretty good representation. I've got the story I'm working on, set in the sixties, and I've got an enormously wealthy family as a player. (We're talking mid-sixties equivalent of Bill Gates wealthy or The Donald.)

So do we think that in the mid-sixties, any member of this family would have opted to travel First Class or would they have eschewed the unwashed masses altogether and had their own private jet?

Also, the Immaculate Conception doesn't refer to Jesus.

Right. Everyone knows that's the impossible pass that Franco Harris managed to catch.

My favorite part of that is that before they decided it was immaculate, people used to celebrate the conception. I bet they had fun party games.

Pin the tail on...

So do we think that in the mid-sixties, any member of this family would have opted to travel First Class or would they have eschewed the unwashed masses altogether and had their own private jet?

I don't think that the unwashed masses were flying much in the mid-60s. According to this site (which I've never heard of before, so I don't know how accurate it is) airlines had less than 3% of the transportation market share in 1965.

So do we think that in the mid-sixties, any member of this family would have opted to travel First Class or would they have eschewed the unwashed masses altogether and had their own private jet?

Well, the Lear Jet popularized corporate jets, and that came out in the early '60s, I think.

Wealthy people back then were often put off by the fact you couldn't stand up in a Lear Jet. The salespeople would say, "You can't stand up in a Cadillac either."

it still kind of bugs me that they seem to think the 12 days of Christmas is a countdown to Christmas.

Yes! Stoopid people.

Barb, in the '60s (and even into the '70s) flying was An Event. People dressed nicely and checked just about everything. Stewardesses were young, attractive, and wore snappy uniforms (except during one best-forgotten fad of the '50s when they had them in coonskin caps ... for a very short time).

Yeah, Calli, I've got a lot of the stats on the percentages-- it was still considered a mode of transportation for the well-off. I think I found a ticket receipt for 1964 that had a round trip flight from New York to Los Angeles as $366.00, for First Class. My 2008 brain immediately went, "Dang, that's not bad for First Class," while my research brain sent, "Think about what $366.00 was in 1964. DUMMY."

tommy, I was just reading in a history of Pan Am how Juan Trippe was annoyed by the fact that many corporations flew their executives on their own corporate jets, so that's why he was prompted to begin a Business Jets division in 1963, in partnership with French airplane manufacturer, Dassault-- designing their own 8-passenger Falcon jet. I haven't researched those yet, so I have no idea how they were outfitted.

I'm also toying with the idea that this is a family that's so insanely old-money wealthy, that they might have even commissioned their own 707 and had it outfitted to their own specifications, but that might be verging into Danielle Steel territory.

Could be First Class is the way to go.