It’s still very expensive, and adjusted for inflation it wasn’t that much different. Coast to coast air trip for example.
But boy do you get a lot less value for the money now!! Let’s just start with leg room. Porter or redcap service, dining service, car service, hotel service, concierges. And then the dumbed all that down and eventually just lobbed a bag of peanuts at you. Now you don’t even get that. And NO services at all to make your trip comfortable. So traveling to day is not much less expensive, has no services or amenities unless you’re doing first class (and that’s wayyyyyy more expensive) than paying for the same services in the past.
The difference is, you are using yesterdays first class fare and services and prices and comparing to today’s economy class prices.
to get the same level of service we used to get standard, requires a first class fare today. So you can’t use general fare prices to compare them.