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Do you know which of these countries receives the most amount of visitors per year? 👀

Feel like air travel is a special kind of hell? Is flying today really that bad or are we all just ungrateful? We took a trip back to the 1940s to compare a transpacific flight then versus one today. Here's what we found: Today, the idea of enduring a 15-hour flight can make you cringe. But have you ever imagined making the same journey 80 years ago? Let's check out what flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong looked like then and now. First, some backstory. Let's rewind to the late 1930s. Pan Am was hell-bent on making transpacific voyages a reality. Although transatlantic journeys were more glamorous and straightforward, bureaucratic red tape was getting in the way. So, in 1934, they charted a new course for Asia. With newly constructed planes burning a hole in Pan Am’s budget, they discovered a route that could take them from California to Asia using a series of tiny islands as stepping stones. However, this wasn’t as simple as the standard layover we think of today. These islands, which included Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam, were not equipped to handle airline travel let alone accommodate passengers. Enter Pan Am's fix-it team. They dispatched a ship and crew to these islands, prepping them to cater to the needs of their planes and passengers. Everything from fuel, speed boats, long-distance communication gear, to prefab hotels for the passengers - they set it all up. Picture this: an island like Wake was entirely uninhabited before Pan Am's invasion. The journey got an upgrade with Boeing's 314 Clipper, the era's most massive commercial aircraft. Sporting two floors and a 152-foot wingspan, this 85,000lb behemoth, powered by four Wright Twin Cyclone Engines, could house 11 crew members and up to 68 day passengers or 36 sleeping passengers. And get this - there was only one "class," a luxury experience for everyone onboard. Fasten your seatbelts because the trip would take six days, with a whopping 60 hours of total flight time. A ticket would set you back $16,000 in today's currency - more than the cost of a car back then. Yes, a car. Flash forward to today, where you can make the same journey in about 14 hours. A nonstop flight will lighten your wallet by around $1500 for economy and can skyrocket to $10,000 for first-class. Most likely, you'll be aboard a Boeing 777-300 or an equivalent Airbus A350-900. These one-level aircraft, boasting a 212-foot wingspan, can ferry about 350 passengers on your 14-hour non-stop voyage across 7,000 miles. Over the last 80 years, we've sped up travel from a six-day adventure to a mere 14-hour flight. A first-class ticket today is still cheaper than it was in 1940! But in this mad dash towards speed and efficiency, have we lost something special? For most, flying feels like a necessary evil, a cramped and tedious race from Point A to Point B. Gone are the days when flying was just as much a part of the adventure.