The golden age of air travel: draft beer and cigars above the clouds

There early in the morning, back late in the afternoon. Before the corona pandemic, business people got on planes every day, like others on the bus or the S-Bahn. Up until almost a year ago, tourists were still flying on vacation by charter jet or sitting tightly on low-cost airlines. The service is zero. A cardboard sandwich or a plastic cup of water against the dry air is only available for cash.

But the conditions on board were not always so Spartan. 50 years ago, flying was still considered a privilege. The price of a long-haul flight was only affordable for an elite: at that time, a plane ticket to New York cost as much as a brand-new VW Beetle.

In retrospect, shortly after the end of the Second World War, the era of air traffic with fan guns and later with the use of the first jets appears as the golden age of aviation. The passengers took their places on sofas and in heavy club chairs, flight attendants carted whole hams and beer kegs through the aisles, mixed cocktails in flying bars, and every passenger was allowed to feel like a VIP.

The best pictures, posters and brochures

The aviation journalist Wolfgang Borgmann has collected press photos from the late 1940s to the 1970s from airlines. From his archive he has put together the best photos, posters and brochures for the volume “The golden age of air traffic”. In the accompanying texts he reports about the birth of the new Lufthansa, about types of aircraft that have almost been forgotten today such as the Comet, Caravelle and VC10, as well as about in-flight service pioneers and anecdotes such as the Smörrebröd War.

Borgmann takes us on a journey through time to a world when flying was still a first-class experience and had nothing in common with traveling by bus. At the time, none of the passengers would have thought that flying would one day become a mass phenomenon and that taxi fare tickets would be squandered.

Also read:

– Lockheed Constellation – once the most beautiful airplane in the world

– Teruel terminus: Why park billions in the Spanish province

– Why the Airbus A380 is scrapped only 15 years after the first rollout

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