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Remember When Flying Was Glamorous?
From piano lounges to luxurious legroom, these are the perks we miss from airline travel’s heyday
Even coach passengers had access to comfortable lounges on airplanes, like the one pictured here, during the heyday of airline travel. Lounges are one of the many long-gone perks, which also included robust food service and ample legroom.
Found Image Holdings/Getty Images
Key takeaways
- Air travel once doubled as entertainment, with airport restaurants and observation decks drawing visitors who were not even flying.
- Passengers enjoyed roomy cabins, flexible seating and far more legroom than is typical on flights today.
- Meals, fashion and onboard lounges helped make flying feel like a special occasion rather than routine transportation.
Flights used to be something travelers looked forward to.
That’s hard to imagine based on today’s typical airline experience, with its shrinking personal space, disappearing in-flight food options and unruly passenger behavior.
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If you’re over 50, though, you may recall the before times — meaning before the late 1970s government deregulation led airlines to compete less on glamour and more on price. And you’re likely aware of how starkly it contrasts with today’s experience, since flying is the preferred mode of travel for that same age group, according to AARP’s 2026 Travel Trends survey.
Airline historian Shea Oakley, 58, remembers. His parents recorded his first flight as part of an airline’s Junior Jet Club in June 1968, when he was mere months old. He has logged every flight since — more than 500 of them — and made a job of observing and analyzing industry changes. “There was no air rage in the ’70s. People were too busy enjoying a very cozy coach experience,” Oakley says. “Getting there was half the fun.”
Here’s a nostalgic look back at how different flying was during those halcyon days — that couple of decades between the introduction of the Boeing 707 that launched the jet age in 1958 and airline deregulation in 1978.
Airports were their own destination
In the 1950s and 1960s, people would visit airports even if they weren’t flying anywhere. They came to dine in restaurants like the upscale Golden Door at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. It served Escargots Bourguignonne and Steak Diane Golden Door, Flambé, prepared at your table, with a view of the arriving and departing planes.
Air traffic was the built-in attraction that could entertain visitors for the better part of a day. “Virtually all commercial airports had very popular free observation decks,” Oakley says. “If you look at pictures from the ’50s and ’60s, you’ll see people on an observation deck 50 feet away from a jetliner.”
Security was nonexistent
The current days of rigorous Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening are a far cry from the stress-free early days. Travelers arrived at the airport and simply ambled to the gate, sometimes accompanied by friends and family — no ID or bag inspection required. It was a very different time for passengers and flight crew alike.
Flight attendants used to wear custom-designed uniforms, like these Braniff International Airways attendants in Emilio Pucci-designed uniforms during the airline’s “End of the Plain Plane” campaign in 1965.
David Attie/Getty Images
Maggie Hill, 73, was a flight attendant for nearly 50 years, beginning at Braniff International Airways, during what she calls “the olden days of elegance on an airplane.” Hill was also a founding flight attendant on Sun Country Airlines and a coauthor of Minnesota’s Phoenix, a 2026 book about the airline. She recalls freely running between planes to visit coworkers during layovers. At one beach locale, she says, a captain and group of flight attendants were known to regularly shimmy under the airport’s perimeter fence for some quick beach time between flights. The only real repercussion, as Hill recalls, was the itchy annoyance of sand trapped inside the flight attendants’ required nylons the entire flight back.
Airline travelers during the Golden Age of Travel had enough personal space to sit comfortably and even play a board game.
Alamy Stock Photo
Personal space was plentiful
Travelers in the 1960s had no concept of what it was like to knock elbows with their seatmates or come anywhere near nudging the seat in front of them with their knees. “The planes were half empty,” Oakley says. “Today, more often than not, you’re in a full airplane. But back then, you could fold up the seat rests and you might as well be in first class.”
Hill says she regularly reseated people. “I would just say, ‘Oh, I think you’re sitting in the wrong seat,’ and I’d move them to areas that were more open,” she says. And the legroom was positively luxurious. “The seats were so far apart … that you could stand up and literally do some ballroom dancing. That’s how free it felt,” Hill says.
Everyone dressed for the occasion
Air travel was a high-cost luxury, and the way travelers dressed reflected that. On flights to Paris, Hill says, passengers boarded clad in couture and furs. “It was like a fashion show, watching people get on,” she says. Photos of the time confirm the norm: men in suits and ties and women in dresses and heels, not a pair of pajama pants in sight.
The flight attendants — then known as stewardesses or hostesses — were not to be outdone. “Airlines spent a lot of money making sure their flight attendants were dressed in the very latest fashions,” Oakley says. Braniff was known for one of the most legendary accessories, a plastic, open-faced space-agey helmet flight attendants wore on the tarmac to protect their hair. Hill wore the final uniform that Emilio Pucci designed for Braniff. Pucci was known for his trippy ’60s kaleidoscope prints. “We transitioned over to Halston, who was just the crème de la crème of understated elegance. We loved those uniforms,” she says. The girdle and the miniskirts, not so much. “Imagine putting things away in the overhead bin,” she says. “It was just a different time.”
Food service on airplanes looked a lot different back in the 1960s and ’70s, when both coach and first class offered some degree of fine tableware, multiple courses and ample beverages.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Food was a first-class experience
Chances were good that even in coach, the utensils were metal and the plates ceramic. Wine flowed freely on Braniff, Hill says, and meal service was generous — a salad, a roll, your choice of hot meal, a cheese course and dessert. “That’s probably what would be considered a first-class flight [now], what we did in coach at Braniff,” Hill says.
First-class, then, was positively decadent. The service carts kept on coming. Cocktails, smoked almonds, canapés, salad, assorted breads and wine all preceded the main course. Dinner might be chateaubriand — a thicker version of filet mignon — or trout almondine, followed by a dessert of baked Alaska, cake and ice cream covered in meringue that Hill flambéed seat-side. Then it was on to a cheese platter, fruit and more wine. “You could hardly imagine people wanting more, but they did,” Hill says. The meal’s final cart, offering a selection of after-dinner drinks, was decorated with a little dry ice doused in crème de menthe, creating a smoky, bright-green centerpiece for intrigue.
In-flight entertainment may have included a piano lounge
The laid-back mood was set from the get-go, with piped-in boarding music. Sure, it was to cover the airplane noise, Hill says, but it set a relaxed tone nonetheless.
Flight attendants came around with a selection of newspapers and magazines. Instead of personal devices or seat-back screens with a variety of on-demand entertainment, travelers could enjoy an in-flight feature projected onto a bulkhead screen. Trans World Airlines (TWA), the pioneer of the in-flight movie, offered headphones for free to first-class passengers and charged those in coach a dollar.
And for a time in the ’70s, travelers benefited from a recession-fueled decline in passenger traffic: Airlines removed seats to create lounges, on top of the 747’s famous first-class upper-deck lounge. “People often don’t remember that the airlines also had coach and first-class main deck lounges on these wide-body aircraft,” Oakley says. “If you really want to talk about a golden era of flying … it was 1972, when you’re in coach and you’re sitting in a piano bar,” he says, noting there were swivel chairs and love seats. “Coach passengers, especially, never had it so good.”
There’s a strong chance there was also a cloud of cigarette smoke, since some airlines handed out cigarettes and armrest ashtrays were common. Perhaps today’s traveler can take comfort in knowing that those long-lost days of piano lounges, extravagant legroom and baked Alaska came with a downside.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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