“Back before America had slipped toward Third World-ism, air travel was about as complicated as taking a cross-town bus.”
There is a scene in the 1974 movie the “Parallax View” where Warren Beatty gets on a plane without a ticket, the stewardess (as they were called back then) comes up to him and sells him a ticket.
I don’t know how true that was but I laugh at it every time I see.
Yes, that sort of thing happened. Flying then was just another not very exotic form of transport. Trolley sort of thing, with wings, and wicked fast.