May 28, 2026
Pink sands, big jets, bigger nostalgia
Boston and Bermuda
When Boston families flew to Bermuda like it was the neighborhood beach trip
TLDR: The article looks back at a time when Boston families regularly flew to Bermuda on giant planes, a trip that now feels impossible in today’s smaller, cheaper-airfare world. Commenters turned it into a debate over nostalgia, class, and Bermuda’s eye-watering prices—especially that now-infamous $30 breakfast.
A warm nostalgia post about 1970s Boston-to-Bermuda vacations somehow turned into a full-blown comment-section time machine. The article remembers a moment when flying was still a luxury for many families, yet Bermuda felt weirdly within reach for New Englanders: close enough to feel practical, fancy enough to feel glamorous, and just exotic enough to beat Florida in the family bragging wars. The real jaw-dropper for readers? Back then, huge planes were doing this short hop like it was no big deal. Today, that sounds almost absurd.
But the community didn’t just swoon over the old-school travel vibes. They immediately split into camps: romantics, skeptics, and price complainers. One reader basically said, lovely story, but where’s the substance? Then came the killer reality check: modern Bermuda is so expensive you can end up paying $30 for a mediocre breakfast, which instantly became the thread’s unofficial villain. Others chimed in with a more emotional angle, recalling when air travel used to feel elite, even intimidating. One commenter confessed that in the 1990s, kids returning from “exotic” winter trips made everyone else feel like peasants with backpacks.
There was also some classic New England energy in the replies: why fly south at all when you’ve got Cape Cod, Maine, and Rhode Island nearby? Add one drive-by “must be Bermuda Week” joke with a random YouTube link, and the whole thing became less a travel article and more a hilarious debate about memory, money, and who really had the better vacation era.
Key Points
- •In the late 1970s, Bermuda was a popular vacation destination for many New England travelers because it was relatively close, affordable through package deals, and perceived as more exotic than Florida.
- •The author’s family traveled from Boston to Bermuda in spring 1979 on an American Airlines DC-10, at a time when both American and Delta used large widebody aircraft on the short route.
- •American’s DC-10s featured a cockpit camera that projected black-and-white images of the pilots during takeoff and landing onto cabin screens.
- •Over time, Boston-Bermuda service shifted from widebody aircraft to smaller jets, including the 727, 767-200, and Airbus A319.
- •The article attributes Bermuda’s decline as New England’s top sun destination to falling airfares and the growth in available destinations, which fragmented the vacation market.