They lumped in Concorde with '50s and '60s air travel, although it didn’t fly until 1969 and, more importantly, didn’t begin passenger service until the mid-1970s. Not sure it means much anyway, since a small percentage of air passengers (and, in the 70s, still a smaller percentage of the population) ever flew on it.
But what about their claim that “during a time when all portable music came over the radio, there wasn’t even the option to plug in a pair of headphones and listen to music during your flight until 1985”? Well, if we want to stretch this time frame to the 1970s – even just the early '70s – airplanes have had headphones since I can remember (at least on 707s and jumbo jets), and presumably they existed before that (40+ years ago). Walkman-type devices have been around for more than 30 years (and in 1980 I can remember a guy playing a boombox on an AQ inter-island flight, although presumably he wasn’t supposed to). They had in-flight movies, too, at least on long-range and/or wide-body flights.
Even without audio-video, most airlines gave kids a pair of wings and a comic book (e.g. Harvey’s AstroComics for AA) or coloring book (PanAm, QANTAS); playing cards for the asking; pen and paper; an assortment of magazines for borrowing (in addition to the airline’s own in-flight magazine).
American’s 747s had a piano lounge in the back, at least until pilots complained about the uneven weight distribution (for that matter, some of their 707s – narrow-body airliners – still had a first-class lounge into the '70s).
Everything I’ve just mentioned was after desegregation, after the era that the article describes, though ticket prices were still more expensive than today. I think some of these amenities lasted a few years after deregulation, as well (I can remember asking for, and getting, a magazine in '96 but I’m not sure when they went away).
I don’t miss the smoking section one bit, though. We always flew standby (my dad worked for AA) and often as not we were stuck in the smoking section.
