The 1950s were apparently the Golden Age of Flying. My mother loves to recall a time when airlines served full-course meals on china, with actual silverware and linen napkins. Until I was in high school, I thought you had to be dressed up to get on an airplane, because my mother insisted that we be in our Sunday best to travel.

That era is long gone, but traveling by air was at least pleasant when I was younger — sometimes even fun. Now it seems to be a test of how much misery passengers can be forced to endure, and how much the airlines can get away with charging for what used to be basic services.

A few years ago, I watched the classic Gene Hackman film “The French Connection.” The movie, set in 1971, features a brief scene in which some of the characters are on what I believe was an Eastern Airlines commuter flight between Washington, D.C., and New York City. It’s shocking to see that even on that small DC-9 jet, there were two big, comfortable seats on either side of an aisle wide enough that flight attendants could walk past each other.

The average width of an airplane seat in 1970 was 18 inches. Now the average is 16.5 inches.

Space isn’t the only place where airlines are socking passengers for fees. Most airlines now charge for luggage. (“You’re traveling, but you want to bring a suitcase? That’s extra.”) And food. (“Isn’t this cool? You can pay for the overpriced stale sandwiches with your phone!”) And Wi-Fi. (“Want to stay connected in the air? It’s only $10 a minute!”) And if you’d like to actually sit next to the people you’re traveling with? There’s now a fee for that too.

You get better options on a Greyhound bus.

But it gets worse. The Sun newspaper reported that WestJet will begin charging passengers additional for their airfare if they want a seat that reclines.

Eventually, the airlines will charge you if you want a seat at all; “Economy” class will be down with the pets in the baggage compartment.

Don’t scoff. In 2012, the Italian design firm Aviointeriors released an airline seating design called “SkyRider” — narrow, saddle-like seats that passengers straddle rather than actually sit in. The seat pitch gets reduced to only 23 inches with that novel idea. The company insists that the design was purely conceptual. We’ll see.

Airlines justify all the new charges by claiming that the low “base price” for a ticket makes flying “affordable” for everyone. Frankly, it’s unclear at this point how desirable an objective that really is.

All of this is without mentioning the long security lines, the frisking by TSA agents, the drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs, the requirements that you strip to your underwear and place everything you’ve got into an X-ray machine, and the rows of migrants sleeping in the terminals.

While economy travel gets progressively insufferable, first-class seats on domestic and international carriers are getting more and more luxurious, with wall dividers, fully reclining leather seats with designer bedding, flatscreen TVs, customized menus with gourmet meals, expensive liqueurs and champagnes, complementary toiletries, pajamas, slippers, private lounges — even showers on some long-haul flights.

There’s something eerily symbolic about all this. At a time when one hears widespread complaints about the growing economic gap between “the 1%” and everyone else, the travel accoutrements for the very wealthy are shockingly luxe, while the vast majority of travelers deal with cattle car conditions (or worse), and there is very little in the middle.

The airline industry needs an overhaul.

In the meantime, I’ll fly if I have to, but otherwise, I’m taking Amtrak. Yes, it’s slow and there are frequent delays, but at least they don’t charge you to actually bring luggage on a trip, the seats are wide and recline for free (with a footrest), and disruptive or dangerous passengers can be tossed off the train at the next stop.