Before the TSA's porn scans and genital gropes for grenades ...

... air travel was glamorous ... an event.

Concorde

Franck Pourcel takes us on a supersonic flight aboard the Concorde.
Franck Pourcel - Concorde, 1975. Available thanks to Easy Listening World.

08. 60.000 Feet

America by Air

"In 1930, Ellen Church became the first airline stewardess after convincing Boeing Air Transport that the presence of women nurses would help relieve passenger fears of flying."

And the project turned out to be a huge success. Men with an economy good enough to chose to be transported by air in the 1930s and 1940s proved her right. Stewardesses have a soothing and comforting effect.

Training groups and schools were set up - and the requirements soon were hard to live up to.

I wouldn't have made it. And I'm pretty girlish, service minded and long enough

Check out if you would have been stewardess material in the 1950s: Stewardess Requirements.

Experience more American airlines history at America by Air.

Jeffrey Milstein: Aircraft

Jeffrey Milstein... Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300. From the exhibition Jeffrey Milstein: Aircraft at Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. "...This exhibition of Jeffrey Milstein’s continued photographic series AirCraft coincides with his long awaited book release 'AirCraft: The Jet as Art,' published by Abrams. Milstein’s photographs of passenger airliners are captured in flight in such a way that they come alive as the amazing, efficient machines they truly are. Standing with his camera at the end of a runway watching them descend, he freezes their headlong 200 mile per hour motion, capturing all the details of their shapes and construction with absolute precision."