While air travel is something that we tend to take for granted these days, flying by plane used to be seen as a luxury and privilege reserved for the wealthy. That said, the whole flying experience wasn’t always as straightforward as it is today and the planes themselves obviously weren’t as efficient and stylish as the hi-tech 21st-century craft we see on airport runways across the world.
Read on as we reveal how planes, and air travel, used to look decades ago – on the outside and inside...
The first powered, heavier-than-air controlled flight in history lasted 12 seconds and flew a distance of 120 feet (36.6m). Orville Wright piloted the Wright Flyer (aka the Kitty Hawk) in North Carolina, USA, which marked the beginning of the pioneer era of aviation, while his brother, Wilbur, observed. The brothers took three other flights on 17 December 1903, each lasting longer than the one before, with the final flight going a distance of 852 feet (260m) in 59 seconds. The original Kitty Hawk is now exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
This picture shows the aeroplane in which British aviators John William Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. They flew a Vickers-Vimy-Rolls bomber between St John's in Newfoundland, Canada, and Clifden in County Galway, Ireland, on 14 and 15 June 1919. The flight took 16 hours and 27 minutes and won the aviators a £10,000 prize awarded by the Daily Mail newspaper.
American aviator and military officer Charles Lindbergh gained celebrity status when he became the first person to fly alone non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927 in his Ryan NYP Spirit of St Louis plane. The ‘Lindbergh boom’ in aviation followed, as aircraft industry stocks rose in value, and interest in flying skyrocketed. Lindbergh’s subsequent US publicity tour demonstrated the airplane’s potential as a safe, reliable form of transportation.
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This image shows a group of well-dressed women and a man on board a German Fokker passenger plane. During the late 1920s, Fokker was the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, with its 1925 F. VIIA/3m trimotor passenger aircraft, designed by Reinhold Platz, used by 54 airline companies worldwide. The company, founded by Dutch aviator Anthony Fokker in 1912, became famous during World War I for its fighter aircraft. It continued to design and manufacture planes for the next six decades, before declaring bankruptcy in 1996.
Pictured here is the interior of a De Havilland Hercules trimotor airliner as it left Perth, Western Australia, on its test flight to Adelaide in May 1929. Four of these DH 66 planes were built in 1929 for West Australian Airways with modifications to meet the country’s requirements. They included an enclosed cockpit, seating for 14 passengers, space for mail and baggage and a tail wheel in place of the original skid.
A shot looking down the 50-foot (15.2m) main aisle of one of the Pan American World Airways Flying Clipper Ships. Named after mid-19th century sailing ships, these aircrafts were designed just before the outbreak of World War II, when very few cities had long runways. Anticipating this obstacle, Boeing produced a long-range plane that could land anywhere, including water. They flew from the US to the UK and made stops in Ireland, the Philippines, Guam, Australia and New Zealand. And not only were the clippers used to transport and entertain elite guests, they also shepherded mail across the Atlantic.
This photo shows a Martin M-130 China Clipper, a commercial four-engine flying boat, flying over San Francisco. It was designed and built in 1935 by the Glenn L Martin Company for Pan American World Airways in Baltimore, Maryland. Three Martin M-130s were built: the Hawaii Clipper, Philippine Clipper and China Clipper. All three crashed – the first disappeared on a flight over the Pacific in 1938; then in 1943 one flew into a California mountainside in poor weather; and in 1945 the last broke up on landing in Trinidad and Tobago.
After a rigorous schooling in the arts of passenger plane service, flight stewards were installed on Eastern Air Lines during the 1930s, becoming the first male servants on a US domestic airline. The stewards worked between New York and Miami, New York and Houston, and Chicago and Miami. In this photo, steward Charles Burns, a member of the airline’s first class of male attendants, makes a passenger comfortable at Newark Airport in New Jersey.
Here, we see Cdre VE Flowerday and Cdre EGL Robinson standing in front of Lockheed 14 Electra belonging to British Airways Ltd at London Heston Aerodrome, UK. A few days before this picture was taken, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned to Heston on board a BA Lockheed 14 after signing the Munich Agreement. He was famously photographed beside the aircraft showing the crowd the signed document, which he described as bringing “peace for our time”.
This picture shows a line up of Douglas DC-2 planes of the Trans World Airlines (TWA) ‘Lindbergh Line’ at a New York airfield during an airshow. Most of these planes were phased out by 1937, as the DC-3 started service, but several DC-2s still operated through the early years of World War II. Howard Hughes acquired control of TWA in 1939 and, after the war, he led the expansion of the airline to serve Europe, the Middle East and Asia, making TWA a second unofficial flag carrier of the US after Pan Am.
The Heinkel He 178 experimental aircraft was the world’s first aircraft to fly using the thrust from a turbojet engine. Having secured the industrial support of Ernst Heinkel, German engineer Hans von Ohain pursued development of the He 178 as a private venture, independent of the German authorities and the Luftwaffe. On 27 August 1939, his first prototype performed its maiden flight, piloted by Erich Warsitz. However, it failed to impress the high-ranking Nazi officials who attended the demonstration.
Taken sometime in 1941, this vintage photo shows a man and woman travelling in a Douglas DC-3 operated by United Airlines. This larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2 was considered far more reliable and comfortable than its predecessor. It was able to cross the continental United States from New York to Los Angeles in about 15 hours, with only three refuelling stops. While production of civilian DC-3s ended in early 1943, dozens were pressed into the US military service.
It wasn’t until the year after World War II that the first racehorses flew over the Atlantic. This image from November 1946 shows the first equine passengers about to be loaded into the American Overseas Airlines flying horsebox to cross the ocean to the US from Shannon Airport in Ireland. The six colts were owned by F More O’Ferrall, the well-known breeder and stock exporter, who intended to race them at Hollywood Park and San Anita in California.
The American Airlines DC-6 flagship Oklahoma is seen here flying over New York City. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, Douglas Aircraft Company reworked the DC-6 to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market. With its seven-foot (2.1m) ceiling height and more than eight-foot (2.4m) floor width, the cabin of the DC-6 was spacious and airy, with the wide aisles and larger seats providing the ultimate in 1940s passenger comfort.
The Bell X-1, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis, was the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound in level flight. The ‘bullet with wings’ was part of American experimental rocket and non-rocket planes designed for testing new technologies. This image shows flying ace Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager who piloted the plane during its groundbreaking flight on 14 October 1947. He named it Glennis after his wife.
When the world’s first commercial jetliner – British-manufactured De Havilland Comet – took its first flight 27 July 1949, it marked a pivotal step in modern commercial air travel. Boasting four turbojet engines, a pressurised cabin, large windows, a relatively comfortable seating area and ‘vibration-free flying’, it was commercially promising at its debut in 1952. However, within a year of the airliner’s entry into service, three Comets were lost in highly publicised mid-flight accidents.
A stewardess is shown here attending to a reclining passenger doing an overnight intercontinental service on board a Boeing Stratocruiser. The plane’s first flight was on 8 July 1947, and it could carry a total of 100 passengers, with a total of 28 berths in the main deck of the aircraft. Each of the double-bunk beds were exceptionally spacious for the time, with abundant headroom and ample width for two people. However, only 55 Model 377s were built for airlines, along with the prototype, and by 1960, Stratocruisers had been superseded by jets.
Seen here at Northolt airport in west London, commercial airliner the V 700 Viscount was first flown in 1948 by Vickers-Armstrongs following development of the V 630 prototypes. It was well-received by the public for its cabin conditions, which included pressurisation, reductions in vibration and noise, and panoramic windows. Originally named Viceroy after the viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, it was renamed Viscount following India’s independence in 1947.
See how air travel has changed in every decade from the 1920s to today
When it made its debut on 20 December 1957, Seattle-based Boeing’s sleek 707 aircraft was lauded for its comfort, speed and safety. Pan American Airways became the first commercial carrier to take delivery of the elongated, swept-wing planes, launching daily flights from New York to Paris. The 707 is said to have inspired Frank Sinatra’s hit song Come Fly With Me and quickly became a symbol of postwar modernity – a time when people dressed up to fly and attendants reflected the epitome of chic. This image shows how it looked ‘up front’ in the cockpit.
This picture shows American actress and model Sandra Giles, along with Pan American Airways hostesses Dianne Flint and Marie Colohan, in the spacious cabin of a Boeing 707-120 jet plane on the ramp in Los Angeles. Designed to travel on transcontinental and transoceanic routes, the larger 707-120, with its silk-screened, hard-surfaced walls, quickly became a symbol of the glamorous jet age.
An air stewardess is seen serving food to passengers on board a Qantas Boeing 707 plane at London Airport. The Australian airline became the first non-United States recipients of Boeing 707s, halving travel times, and passengers on the transpacific route experiencing much improved comfort as they flew above the clouds. In 1961, Qantas introduced jet services to Tokyo and Hong Kong aboard its Boeing 707-138s.
Originally made for military use as the Sea Knight, the Boeing-Vertol 107 was intended to carry 23 to 25 passengers and designed for water-landing capability, without the addition of special flotation gear or boat hull design. Here, we see one of New York Airways’ passenger helicopters flying over the skyline of the Big Apple. On 14 October 1963, one of the 107s crashed shortly after takeoff from Idlewild Airport (now JFK) en route to Newark via Wall Street.
Back in 1954, studies began into the possibility of building a supersonic airliner, with France and the UK signing a treaty establishing the development of the joint project on 29 November 1962. Construction of Concorde began in 1965 and this image from December 1967 shows pilots and hostesses from those airliners who had ordered the planes, standing in front of the original model at the official roll-out ceremony in Toulouse, France.
The mid-1960s saw the development of another plane that would change the face of travel – the Boeing 747. Here, we see the wide-bodied jumbo jet publicly unveiled for the first time in September 1968 during a ceremony for an audience of employees and guests outside the company's facility in Everett, Washington, USA.
This image shows the interior of the new Boeing 747 passenger plane during development, nine months ahead of its first flight on 9 February 1969, and before it entered service with Pan Am on 22 January 1970. The huge size of the Boeing 747 presented airlines with the opportunity to improve their passenger experience. All the seats on board were wide, with huge amounts of legroom and sumptuous cushions that today’s economy flier can only dream of.
Meanwhile, after years of planning and development, not to mention over budget, the Concorde prototype’s first flight took place above Toulouse in southern France (pictured) on 2 March 1969. It would be another four and a half years before its first non-stop transatlantic crossing, on 26 September 1973, and another two and a half years before its scheduled supersonic passenger service actually commenced.
While the 747 cabin was undeniably comfortable, the interior of the supersonic Concorde was much tighter, the windows were much smaller – it only had around 100 seats per flight, and there was little difference between Business and First Class. Although Concorde was initially a success, allowing passengers to fly between London and New York in just under three hours, its excessive noise and large operating expenses limited its scope and only 14 of the aircraft actually went into service. In 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed shortly after take-off from Paris, and by October 2003, the supersonic jet was grounded worldwide.
The prototype of the world’s first wide-body twin-engined commercial aircraft, the Airbus A300, first flew on 28 October 1972. This image shows French reporter Yves Mourousi and the orchestra of Marc Laferrière taking part in a radio broadcast at an altitude of 19,700 feet (6,000m) on board the first model of the aircraft delivered to Air France, 10 days before its first commercial flight in May 1974. The French national airline operated a total of 25 A300s, intended for short to medium haul flights, in the years that followed.
The Airbus A320 airliner was, and still is, a hugely popular technological trailblazer. One of the most produced passenger planes in the world, it forms the backbone of many short and medium haul fleets, and as of October 2024, nearly 19,000 A320 family aircraft had been ordered, with over 11,000 delivered. The first model made its inaugural flight from Toulouse on 22 February 1987, and this image shows employees of Aerospatiale posing near the airliner just before its take off.
Now discover more groundbreaking planes that have changed the way we travel