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The ocean liner was the New Amsterdam, and it was a little over a day away from the east coast on its week-long cruise to Rotterdam when the ship’s doctor told my mom and dad that my little sister’s tummy ache was appendicitis, and he was not qualified to perform the operation. As a result, the ship had to turn around and head for the nearest port at Halifax, Nova Scotia where, when we were close enough, my dad and sister were heli-vac’d to the hospital while the liner brought my mom and us remaining five kids to port a day later – no doubt as personae non grata to the other cruise customers by that time.

Two weeks later the eight of us climbed aboard an Air Canada jet to attempt “take-two” of a year in Europe. It was late summer, 1969; I was seven years old, about to turn eight, and I was much more excited about a transatlantic flight than a sea voyage, especially after a few days of learning the ropes on the ocean liner. Shuttle board was good for a few hours, as was the arcade with a single pinball machine. There was a small movie theater, but it was only showing 2001: A Space Odyssey – I didn’t understand it when my older sisters took me to see it, and I didn’t think repeated viewings at that stage of my life was going to make the storyline any clearer to me (at this stage of my life either, come to think of it).

The thought of my first airplane flight, however, sounded like nothing but good fun, and Air Canada lived up to my fertile expectations. The whole plane was basically a movie theater, and they never stopped running them, with the proper heavy emphasis on Walt Disney releases. The food also never stopped coming; it was good, and I wondered where they hid it all. Those rolling carts never stopped coming, though, powered by eager, smiling stewardesses that made you want to fly again as soon as possible. Even going to the bathroom was a blast, since figuring out how all the knobs and buttons worked (sorry, stewardess lady!) was far more interesting than the pinball machine on the ship.

My parents were really happy about the flight too. My genius dad had booked one seat in the smoking section, so instead of enduring constant warnings against cigarette smoking on the ocean liner, he and mom would trade places every hour or so – one watching us six kids in front, and one puffing contentedly in the back. We kids preferred my dad watching us, since he always thought one more round of those neat eight-ounce glass bottles of Coca-Cola was a grand idea (winks all around, and later another trip to the bathroom). Even my freshly perforated sister had a great time.

Stewardesses are long gone now, of course, replaced by Regulation Wardens with far too much union seniority to care about giving an adult customer another drink with a smile, much less a kid. Now we pay for drinks, for food (if it’s available), for baggage space, for an aisle seat in coach if it’s closer to the front, and on and on. But what really is a shame is the complete and total loss of flying as part of the wonder of travel. Rather, flying now has all the luster of backing out of the driveway or paying a highway toll – actions necessary to getting where you are going so that the wonder can begin.

At this moment I’m an hour into a two-hour flight to the east coast. There are three flight attendants (we all should have seen it was the beginning of the end when stewardesses demanded to be referred to as flight attendants), and I have not yet seen a smile from one of them. Smiles have been replaced by snide and short-tempered instructions to passengers (shall we now insist on being called Paying Sky Customers?), with the pre-flight reminder that if we doth protest too much, the full power of the law stands behind their mirthless concerns about our safety that somehow consist mainly of sitting down quickly, moving about as little as possible during the flight, and getting off quickly. Nonetheless, I’m sure that just a little more cost cutting will make the U.S. airlines profitable again, and profits equal happy customers – at least in the economic models of airline executives that have never flown anonymously in the coach class of their own airlines.

(The comments above are not in any way directed at the scores of profitable Asian airlines that still treat customers like customers, and continue to look for ways to thrill them.)