There’s a photo of economy class seating on a Pan-Am 747 in the 1960s that has been making the internet rounds for years now – usually accompanied by a headline noting the “glory days of flying”. Well, Factually is now exposing the photo as a fake:
The cabin is actually just a mock-up made by Boeing in the 1960s to demonstrate what one of their planes might look like one day. The models in this photo never left the ground. Yes, planes were certainly more roomy back in the 1950s and 60s. But they were also incredibly expensive, painfully slow, and often discriminatory. Even the promo photos above showed only white people. The color version of the “1960s economy class” photo appears, but more commonly people like to share the black and white version. Maybe it feels more old-timey in black and white? I really don’t know.
That leg room does look pretty amazing!
Related – The “Air Strip” & Other Sexy Airline Videos from the ’60s and ’70s
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1 comment
| But they were also incredibly expensive, painfully slow, and often discriminatory.
| Even the promo photos above showed only white people.
?? Nothing made the *planes* discriminatory.
These were not busses in the Jim Crow South, with separate “Coloreds Only” seating. Just because Boeing chose to populate the models for their photo the way they did means nothing more than a bias on the part of Boeing’s marketing dept. at the time.
We’ve got enough challenges with race relations in the country at the moment, and no need to invent new slights or behaviors where one didn’t exist.