Lamenting the commodification of air travel.

I love the cover of this Sinatra album — Frankie in his suit and fedora, his gal with her perfectly polished nails, unharried flight attendants rolling out the red carpet — and while I am nowhere near old enough to have flown in those days, I find myself strangely nostalgic for them.

Air travel now is marked not just by inconvenient security policies but by a general crassness that pervades everything. Whether it’s your seatmate, in sweatpants, cramming everything he owns except his toiletries (assuming he uses any) into the overhead bin while you pray nothing tumbles out and gives you a concussion, the crappy bag of potato chips provided as your snack, the bland polyester-blend travel blankets you still have to fight your plane-mates over, or the delays, overbookings and rude service, it’s enough to make you reach for the Xanax and hope you don’t need them later for turbulence. And don’t even think about using your frequent flyer miles to upgrade to first class. On most planes, it’s nonexistent to near-nonexistent now.

Some attempts to improve service have been made. Delta launched Song a few years ago, providing direct service between major cities in gaily decorated planes with leather seats and flight attendants outfitted by Jack and Kate Spade. Song has, unfortunately, been folded neatly back into its parent; the planes are still flying, but I hear the attendants are back in navy polyester.

International flights are offering a little rest for the weary. American Airlines has funky new angled-lie-flat seats with entertainment systems in business class, lie-flat seats in first and — get this — they’ve brought back the salt and pepper shakers. Silverjet, MAXjet and eos are all offering low-cost business-class-only flights where you don’t have to subsidize those sods in economy, because there aren’t any.

However, if you’re stuck flying domestically, your best options these days are to bring your own cashmere travel blanket and a good pair of noise-canceling headphones. You can plant yourself in front of TV or a movie on airlines like JetBlue or Frontier, but that’s about as nice as it gets. And forget about getting any work done, as you know you wont have either the room or the peace and quiet necessary to make that happen; pick up a good magazine instead, as you won’t be able to concentrate on a book, either. There are alternatives, but while fractional jet services like NetJets are nice, they are not accessible to most of us. Air taxis are just now getting off the ground, no pun intended; in a few years, this may be a viable option, but for now it’s speculative.

You could also board the plane in a fedora, if you want to channel Frank.

- Alyx