The uniforms were by extinct US airline Braniff International, but what was the airliner?
The recent item about Clara Adams, the original frequent flyer, caused the doors to the vault of historic airline exhibits to spring open. A reader sent a link to this collection of images from the early years of jet airliners on Vacation.com and comprising mainly images and few details, it included some surprises.
And not just fashion surprises (above). No airline ever flew with flight attendants in psychedelic tights, for a start. And the seats are pretty ordinary, with the trademark clumsy trays of the early jet age. But why is the floor uneven? You can see that the seats in the background sit on a curve or rise, like the cabin floor of the Super Constellations. And what’s with the weird overhead locker design?
The answer is below.
The late '60s Boeing answer to Concorde, the 2707-300 © Boeing
Strangely for such a futuristic concept, no-one thought to include seat back video units. The proposed Concorde beater came in a variety of forms, but most of them involved a slight ‘coke-bottle’ shape to the fuselage, giving the cabin two different cross-sections and a step in the floor. Funding for this model, the least ambitious of all the proposals, was finally cut off in 1971. It never advanced beyond a full scale mock-up, rather like the prototype 787 Dreamliner that currently awaits wing surgery before it makes its first flight.
An Ansett-ANA Boeing 727-100 circa the late '60s, at Essendon Airport.
The collection includes images from the early Australian jet age, such as this Ansett-ANA 727-100 (above). This jet, and its stretch the 727-200, was faster than any of today’s domestic airliners, and cut up to an hour off transcontinental flight times compared to later 737s and 767s, but burned fuel like it was less than a dollar a litre, which it was.
It also includes (below) a very rare but not very good photo of the downstairs lounge that airlines could specify for their Lockheed Tristar wide body jets, an airliner similar in size to the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, but commercially less successful .
The late 70s concept of a short inter-city flight
The photo comes without notes, but appears to show the lounge Pacific Southwest Airlines, or PSA, the first low-cost US jet airline, used on a fleet of two Tristars that briefly but gloriously operated the Los Angeles-San Francisco route in the early ’80s.
By this time PSA had completely lost the plot, and had long morphed from being the template that Lamar Muse adopted for Southwest into a bloated, self indulgent airline that had diversified into pop radio stations and other non-airline activities. However for those making the 70 minute flight between LAX and SFO, a ‘saucy’ airline, with roomy seats and a downstairs bar lounge was just part of an indulgent decade in business and air travel in general.
This last photo also appears to have been taken on a PSA flight. Yes, the times were… different.
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See, an airline doesn’t need cheap tickets, workable terminals, usable booking systems, good working relationships with travel agencies, reliable flights, a flawless safety record, or corporate responsibility. All one of them needs to do to win the air wars is scrap the political correctness and bring back great legs.
For anyone interested I believe that the “coke bottle” fuselage shape Ben mentions is to minimise drag in accordance with what is known as the “area rule”.
Wikipedia has a relatively detailed explanation including how modern airliners are designed with it it mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_rule
Ben, the images of the two hot-pant wearing stewardesses was taken on an early Southwest Airlines flight.
Sadly, fashion has moved on, and today Southwest’s flight attendant’s wear rather less daring fashions.
Circa 1980, one of the PSA lower lounge L1011s was being operated by AeroPeru on their Miami-Lima run. The lounge was still there, roped off (and I mean literally, roped), unused.
Is that Lieutenant Uhura in the 70s concept picture?
I always remember PSA airlines for the dramatic photograph of a Boeing 727 crashing in flames over San Diego in 1978. If you Google for “PSA Crash” you can find it, or see it at the PSA history museum.
http://www.psa-history.org/museum/crash.htm
PSA would paint a smiley face on the front of each plane, which didn’t look so appropriate when the plane was crashing.
I got into this industry based on the images above ;-]
There have been some good books published about the history of flight attendants. I bought one five years ago called “Come Fly With Us!: A Global History of the Airline Hostess” which is now out of print, but can be found in good libraries. It contains hundreds of magnificent photos and stories. A similar one is called “Stewardess: Come Fly with Me!” – almost a copy of the first mentioned. Both books can be obtained either new or used from Amazon, along with others of a similar theme.