I have a theory. There’s a set amount of Good Stuff in the universe, and a set amount of Crap, and the ratios aren’t great. Maybe it’s 20:80 good-to-crap ratio, maybe 30:70. Whatever it is, there does seem to be more Crap than Good Stuff. Even if there’s set quantities of these elements, how they get distributed is not fixed, not by a long shot. This means that the particular things that are Crap or Good Stuff can vary wildly over time, and you will likely live through many cycles of things in your life fluctuating between Crap and Good Stuff.
For example, at this moment in history, we live in a world where there are excellent quality television programming options, our air is relatively clean, and our airliners are boring and soulless flying tubes of people. Compare that to the 1970s, where most television was inane drivel (even if nostalgia makes it fun now, but go ahead, try sitting through an episode of Hello, Larry), air quality was garbage, but airliners had dazzling, colorful, and exciting interiors.
See? I don’t exactly know how all the math shakes out, but trust me, it’s the same ratios of Good Stuff to Crap. But I’m here to brighten your day, not defecate upon it, so let’s take a quick look at one of the things in the 1970s set of Good Stuff: airline interiors, specifically, the interiors of the upper-deck lounges on Boeing 747s.
We all are familiar with the distinctive humpbacked appearance of the 747. It’s perhaps one of the most recognizable commercial aircraft ever – almost anyone can identify a picture of a Boeing 747, unlike other common aircraft like an Airbus A330 or something, which, if you show a picture to a random person, they’ll just tell you that’s an “airplane” before demanding that you let go of their arm.
The 747 is notable for that second-deck hump. In most later (around the late 1980s/early 1990s to the end of production in 2022) configurations of the 747, that upper deck was used to cram in more lucrative first-class passengers, as you can see here:
But that wasn’t always the case! In the first full decade of 747 production and use, the 1970s, that upper deck was something far more incredible:
See what’s going on up there? Let’s get a better look! COMPUTER! Zoom and enhance!
Look at that! The upper deck wasn’t for shoving in more expensive seats; it was for letting the people in those seats roam and relax and, yes, lounge, the verb, because this was a lounge, the noun. And, it’s one of the most ’70s nouns I can think of. Lounge. It’s simultaneously classy and sleazy all at the same time, just like the ’70s. It’s uninhibited and decadent, luxurious and languid, all rich earthtone upholstery and draped people, made both physically and mentally loose and pliable thanks to the judicious application of quaaludes and booze.
There’s some good scenes of this majestic upper lounge in this promotional film from Qantas Airlines:
Here’s a better look at their lounge, which was themed around the famous British Royal Navy officer Captian Cook, who visited Hawaii and Australia in the 1700s:
Hot mangoes, that’s some raw, industrial-grade swank going on there.
Look at all those smooth operators, operating smoothly. And note the nautical themed decorations, the lanterns, the ship’s wheel, the portrait of the Captain himself. Fantastic.
Boeing themselves encouraged the use of the upper deck for lounge spaces, and even designed some of their own, like the incredible “Tiger Lounge”:
This one was never actually installed on any airline’s 747, but I’m sure it provided some inspiration to the airline executives as they hoovered up fat rails of cocaine off the polished surface of a beautiful mahogany desk. I mean, look at it! The animal prints! The orange carpet, the almost conversation pit, that leather center bar thing, everything, everything, everything! Oh, and as some commenters have pointed out, this concept appears to be under the upper deck, in the nose section. Which may be why no one wanted it, as that’s a lot of seating real estate to give up.
Even if the Tiger Lounge didn’t make it to production, don’t fret, because this one did, on Air India 747s:
Wow. That’s astounding.
It wasn’t just lounges that occupied these upper decks; there were also more full-fledged restaurants:
Why does Gingham Tie look so shocked by that coffee? What does he know? Is that the glass he dropped the bennies in?
…and of course, there were straightforward bars:
That’s on a Continental 747. I wonder if anyone has the heart to tell Baldy O’Hawaiianshirt on the right there how far out of his league he is.
Continental even took the concept a bit further (and into the 1980s) as they fitted not just some generic bar, but an actual pub on all their widebody jets:
I think my favorite of all of these, though, is what American Airlines did. They stuck an organ up there:
Yep, that was a real, working organ, for that piano bar sort of feeling. As far as I understand it, anyone could sit down and play; perhaps your flight was lucky enough to have actually talented people and/or flight attendants? Did tipsy travelers actually gather around these and belt out a spirited chorus of Rocket Man or something like that? I sure as hell hope so.
There are very few passenger 747s left (there are some, as commenters have noted), and even if there still were, they haven’t had lounges like these in quite a while. The world that allowed this gleeful madness to exist currently no longer exists. The cycles of Crap and Good Stuff have shifted, and wild 747 lounges were a casualty.
Well, they’re not completely gone; if you have the money for a business class ticket on Emirates Airlines and they stick you on an A380, then you can enjoy their modern take on the Lounge:
[Mercedes Note: A big reason the aircraft interior design of the 1970s went away is that the economics of running an airline have dramatically changed. The government used to control airline market entry, routes, and fare structures. Since airlines weren’t competing on pricing, they instead competed on the experience. Airlines marketed themselves on speed, luxury, and safety. Following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, airlines had the freedom to set their own prices, and new airlines had far less red tape in entering the market. Soon enough, ticket prices plummeted as airlines tried to grab passengers with attractive fares.
If you account for inflation, even base tickets in the 1970s were thousands of dollars. People treated flying like going to a formal dinner, in part because it was so expensive and not an experience that just anyone could do. In the post-regulation world, you can fly thousands of miles for under $100. But to make that work, airlines have to cram as many people as possible on the planes, have those planes be as efficient as possible, and keep those planes in the sky for as many hours in a day as possible. So, while flying might not be magical anymore, it is accessible to far more people. – MS]
Maybe they’ll come back on a wider scale, but we’ll have to give up something good. I bet we could allocate a bit of how many craft beers there are now to get these back, right? I mean, we get it, we can go back from having a heptillion beer choices to just, I don’t know, hundreds? I’m willing to make that sacrifice, at least for a bit.
Commoners love to fantasize about that era without realizing they could never have afforded it. Even a steerage class seat was out of reach for most.
This! We may be going back to flying only being for the rich again.
This article is disingenuous for not including ticket prices in today’s dollars. I’d hazard a guess that a flight on a lounge equipped 747 would be north of $5k in today’s money.
Often times, you’d find the plane’s Captain hanging out in the lounge, with a strong martini in hand.
I wonder how they kept it classy up there and keep out the rifraf.
(On a TGV, I usually book the cheapest seat and then spend all my travelling time in the excellent bar.)
Simple really, you’d charge enough that the rifraf couldn’t afford it. The seating density of older airliners was also significantly lower than modern, especially for economy seats.
Comparing 3 class 70’s layouts to todays, passenger count is up from 366 to 467. Old 3 class to modern 4 class (8 lux suites, 80 lay flat seats, then 32 premium economy, 244 regular economy) goes to 364.
You mean these were actually numbered seats that would get sold?
I thought it worked like in the TGV. All passengers need a ticket for a numbered seat.
Seats in the restauration area (in this case lounge) would not be numbered and would be used while using the bar.
The lounge seats were open use afaik. Assigned seat ticket for normal seats.
I meant that flight prices back in the 70s were multiple times more expensive than today for ‘equivalent’ class seats, but there was much more room/luxury in any given seat.
I hope you all notice the less than suptle difference in lounge for the old 747 and the new A380.
The 747 is meant to make the traveller feel comfortable, at ease, and to evoke a sence of class.
The A380 is meant to sell stuff and take your money.
Is there a RV with a tiger lounge theme from the factory? I need to obtain this knowledge! Paging Mercedes
I did not see anyone mention the blink and you miss it Pan Am lounge scene near the beginning of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Its when we first see Sharon Tate in the movie.
When the airlines were deregulated, a race to the bottom occurred on price. Niceties like this gave way to democratizing air travel, for better or worse. Now anyone could fly, but those lounges were wasted space that could be filled with more paying passengers.
They’re not coming back, unless you want to fly Emirates or something.
Bingo. Flying, even into the 90s, was massively expensive compared to today. It basically kept getting denser and thus cheaper until bottoming out around 2005.
Planes, trains and automobiles. I’m here for it. I rode on a cross country Amtrak trip and my parents were smart enough to book two sleeper cars. Showering on a moving train is challenging and fun. The lounge was great. The restaurant was fantastic too, but the best part was meeting two other youths who had what must have been a gallon size bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. The two Utes, my friend and I had lots of fun that evening all over the train. Ah, 1994 I miss you!
In 1979, I flew direct from Vancouver Canada to Gatwick on (now defunct) Ward Air. On Ward Air, all food and drinks were on the house. The food came first and shortly after we hit “International airspace” (no US laws) they opened the upper bar and that plane began to party. I’ll never forget sitting beside a right sotted British Catholic Priest singing pub songs, drinking and smoking. The bar air was thick with smoke, music played and everyone was happy. There was a constant stream of people back and forth to the bar bringing the party and drinks with them to the lower seating area. Met a lot of people including a gorgeous girl named Twila that I’d never forget. Best nine hours of my whole three week trip.
It’s shame it all got legislated away by intolerance that parades as piety.
I would love to have tried flying one of those Pan Am Clippers. The interiors seemed pretty luxurious as well!
One of them ended up flying right around the world when WW2 broke out
Sadly, while the pre-war original clipper flying boats were beautiful and I love them, being unpressurized and prop-powered, the luxury was tempered by noise and a rough ride. And, ofc, many stopovers along the Pacific for fuel, etc. but yeah, I’m fascinated with the old Pan AM clipper boat planes (although technically, all of the Pan AM big liners were “clippers”, to the end)
I remember, if I trust memories more than 50 years old, flying in the early 1970s on a 747 from Newark (EWR?) to SFO in economy. Even less reliable is my memory of a price of $200 (round trip?!?).
There was a lounge in the front that had booths, like in diners. Later, I recall flying with that ‘lounge’ on a Continental flight. After that, flying was crap until I got to fly business class for work on international flights.
The best was business class for SFO to Seoul on Singapore, back when they had non-stops. Oh, I miss those days and dread flying now.
I flew on a Continental airlines 747 from Newark to San Francisco in one of those piano bar 747s.
I believe it was a piano, not an organ, and an an open bar tab. well sort of an open bar tab, but it really was was a couple hundred dollars in airline credit and I swore I would never get near eastern airlines or continental again.
What happened was the day before my wife and I had a flight from JFK to San Francisco on Eastern Airlines. After we boarded the plane, they were stuck on the tarmac for a while and then the pilot came on the PA and announced that one of his gauges said that the hydraulic pressure was one thing but another gauge said it was something completely different and everything is probably fine but they really needed to have somebody go look at it. Been about 15 minutes later the pilot was on the intercom again and said that they found the mechanic but they needed a special wrench and they’re going to have to borrow one from another airline and he would keep us posted. learn a few minutes later, an Eastern Airlines mechanic walks down the aisle toward the back of the plane, accompanied by a TWA mechanic carrying the mythical special wrench, which apparently was too rare and important to let out of the sight of an airline employee.
Then in quick sequence the mechanics cut loose with some very colorful language describing anatomically, difficult sex acts between unlikely public figures, the cabin filled with either smoke or a dense fog of unusually bad oder, and the pilot got on the PA and said “you may have noticed something that looks like smoke but we are not really on fire but the air conditioning has just experienced a failure, we suggest you take take this opportunity to leave the airplane through the rear stairs” this was on an MD 80 btw. So we get out of the airplane way the fuck out on the tarmac, with airline employees on bullhorns telling us that Eastern airlines will not be responsible for anything dripping out of the wings onto our clothing so don’t walk under the wings, and to follow the painted line that they were standing on back to the terminal.
This is pre-911 of course, but when we got back to the terminal, there was some sort of problem regarding protocol and people who are not airline employees entering the terminal from the tarmac. When we finally got back into the terminal , the top three requests were booking on another flight, something to drink and access to our luggage. Splitting the difference, a handful of airline employees came out and distributed salted nuts and said that the flight had not yet been officially canceled so that they could not give us our luggage or alternate tickets.
Eventually the flight was canceled not because the aircraft was sitting way the f@&$ out on the tarmac venting the devil‘s halitosis and hydraulic fluid, but because the crew was timing out of their shifts.
We got tickets on a TWA flight about an hour and a half later, but instead of giving each of us a taxi voucher, they split us up in the groups of four with a single taxi voucher amongst us. Our group of four consisted of myself, my wife, an unaccompanied boy and girl, whose parents were Buddhist monks who were having them travel alone to Hawaii, and a rather odd looking guy who said that he was Russian and traveling to the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey to teach Russian – along with an expression that indicated it was bullshit, but that was what he was supposed to say- along with about 20 cartons of books.
Naturally all that wasn’t going to fit into a standard New York taxi cab so after some incantations to the taxi fairy, a New York City yellow cab that happened also be a station wagon appeared, and the driver very carefully crammed all the boxes of books into the back of the wagon, having to stop halfway through and rearrange them to get them to all fit after about 20 minutes of this with great pride, he announced that we were ready to go slammed the rear hatch closed with a flourish, and the windows of the back of the cab blew out.
Eventually, an Eastern airline employee came out and assess the situation and gave the two kids my wife and myself one voucher and Mr. Not-really-a-Russian-teacher-at-the-Naval-post-graduate-school his own taxi voucher.
The two unaccompanied minor children of Buddhist monks on their way to Hawaii had somehow came under our care, which all things considered was probably better than Eastern Airlines, and eventually we arrived at the TWA terminal.
TWA of course had no idea at all who we were , why we were there, or how we expected an entire airliner full of people to squeeze onto another already pretty full flight which had already left anyway. The other travelers who were not delayed by a NYC Taxi stuffed with Russian literature to its literal bursting point, had to argue about all this while the flight they could not board was still loading. They were rather agitated.
My wife, rather prone to agitation herself, at this point realized her suitcase had been last seen back at the scene of the Russian lit explosion, and said to keep an eye on the kids while she went to track down her suitcase.
I announced to no one on particular but apparently in my outdoor voice, that Eastern airlines had been purchased by Continental so really they were the same company, and Continental’s terminal was right next door so I thought I would walk over there an see if I could unscramble things.
I walked across to the Continental terminal and as entered noticed that the entire group was following me. The Continental desk was a counter in front of a circular freestanding partition, with a couple people by the terminal who saw us all coming in and and sensing something was off about the whole thing went behind the partition.
I thought to myself, these people aren’t going to be any help, but there’s a completely other batch of employees downstairs at arrivals, so I went there.
There was a woman at the oversized baggage claim desk, and I told her the whole story leaving about 3/4 of it out including the part about the angry mob upstairs, perhaps mentioning only “others” and she said that she was in some sort of program rotating through a lot of jobs for some reason and she had a user account that could maybe exchange a ticket.
She tried doing just that, but the terminal at that counter was locked out of those tasks, so she said let’s go upstairs, I can use one of those terminals.
So we went upstairs to departures and somehow she didn’t really notice about a hundred people milling about looking at us as though we were their escape from New York like in that movie where Blofeld is the president. Baggage claim woman with all the passwords starts typing on the terminal and after about thirty seconds there’s some sort of commotion on the other side of the partition, and someone back there yells “you can’t do that!” I just sort of yell “hey we know you’re there, we can hear you” and slap the counter. All of a sudden about a hundred people are kicking the partition and shouting “we know you’re there, we can hear you”
At this point I’m wondering if inciting a riot will look good on my resume “leadership skills: Led the LaGuardia Riot of 1990”
Eventually a cop shows up, and seems to think I’m the person to discuss this with. I don’t know how that keeps happening but anyway I give him an abridged account of the events of the day, adding that the angry mob just seeme to be following me around the way baby ducks do if they imprint on you and they think you are their mother. The cop seemed to be sympathetic to my plight , maybe he grew up on a farm and was followed by ducks too? Then a woman in a suit that indicated she was an airline executive or a sea captain but not a pilot or crew member because way too much gravitas to get off the ground for sure appeared.
A recitation of the events of the day, and she said that there was a Continental flight out of Newark the next morning and she could book us on that and give us a credit for our tickets, which sounded like the best we could expect.
Of course we asked if couldn’t we get a voucher for a hotel and she said it looks like you live in Manhattan why do you need a hotel reported to the two unaccompanied minor and said well what about them? They’re not our kids, and we’re not taking them to our basement apartment in the east village.
So we spent the night in a holiday inn in Newark were the upper floors were being used as some sort of jail or protective custody or something very mysterious. The Russian guy who’s trip was still parallel to ours was quite alarmed about the police presence, and managed to cause a scene when the luggage cart he was using to take his books to his room generated a huge wave of loose carpet as wheels it to his room at the end of the hall. In the morning a group of hotel staff were standing on either side of the hump of carpet, as though it portended some meaning other than maybe it was time for new carpet.
Finally we got to the airport with the children who were ours yet not ours, and we got to sit in the piano bar for the full flight.
The older unaccompanied minor, a girl about 14, kept insisting my wife buy her a martini, which she claimed was a normal thing for her.
“I’m a 14 year old Asian girl, how are they going to know how old I am?” Considering the frequency of unlikely events we declined to get some strange 14 year old drunk.
Anyway the lounge life up in the hump was very nice.
A year or so before I flew to to Narita on my way to China on JAL ,and specified no smoking seats. That got you in the first class section up in the hump because the passengers in the downstairs were all chain smoking. That also was lovely amazing food and slippers . Quite the contrast to CAAC where there was live poultry and lots of smoking on their planes. At least the chickens didn’t smoke.
You had me at “the devil’s halitosis”. Riveting writing!
A man of hilarious and elegant prose, well done, Mr. Hugh.
This should be the script of a movie with Tom Hanks. Or Chevy Chase.
I’ve had the pleasure of flying in the modern equivalent of the 747, the A380 with lounges/bars and even though I’m in a business class or first class suite I LOVE the few hours of the flight that the lounge is available (it starts usually about an hour into the flight and an hour before landing).
Look, I can have a nice cocktail at my seat while watching tv or reading the autopian, but nothing makes me feel like an international man of mystery like a dirty martini while chatting up some sheikh. It’s just cooler.
Not much of anything was better in the 70s, least of all society or the cars, but flying was so goddamn expensive before the deregulation act that the airlines really felt like they owed you something and the lounge was a prime example. It’s still like that in business class (because the flights cost the same) but the social aspect of a lounge on a plane is just such a uniquely COOL thing. I’m just imagining how many made up stories were told on all those wonderful queens that now only have skeleton crews and cargo. le sigh.
Oh cool, an article about airplanes! Must be by Mercedes.
Hmm. Slightly irreverent, can’t be her. Maybe Peter is still dreaming about that cockpit. (Hehe).
Oh. The by-line still says something about a 2CV. Hoodwinked again by Torch!
I’m guessing these were reserved for first class. Us poors were never going to be getting wasted in any of those.
not in the 70s, but that’s because flying an international flight even in economy was reserved for the upper class, the avg price of a Pan Am flight from JFK to LHR was about 500 bucks back then which is like 4-5k now.
People love to complain about how airlines nickel and dime us and I’m not defending them but deregulation was the means through which the average consumer could finally travel the world on jets.
Wasn’t flight prices regulated up until the 80s or something which caused the prices of flights to be so high until deregulation? And then we got the joy of ultra low cost airlines. LOL
Yep 1978
The problem is the flying public has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vast majority don’t care how shitty flying is so long as it’s cheap.
I hate flying but I’m not willing to pay more to make it less of a pain. I travel with my family from CA to Frankfurt once a year to see the rest of the fam and always take the cheapest seats I can get. It sucks major ass but when it’s done, it’s done and I have a few more thousand in my bank account to play with.
The problem is, once you start flying the correct way, the shit way is reaaaaalllllyyy hard to go back to.
Yeah…It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s that I see no point in spending all that extra money for 2 kids that are going to be climbing all over me anyway. If it was just myself and my wife I’d go for it. That flight can take up to 11.5 hours.
I get it, I understand it, and I respect it. But I really don’t want to when my 1 year old is older haha.
I remember the return ticket between DFW and FRA on Braniff International was $600 in 1980. That is $2,575.45 adjusted.
Well, certainly reserved for adults. As a 7 year old boy, my very first flight ever was lucky enough to have a lounge. I was so excited that I ran straight up the spiral stairs… only to be told by the bartender to “come back when you are grown up” and then being gently kicked out. (That’s right, I was 86’d from a bar at age seven). Imagine my disappointment upon reaching adulthood, discovering that airplanes are now run-down Greyhound busses.
I had a friend that was on a Continental 747 from LAX to ORD. There was a group of Texas oilmen that had the entire first class section to themselves. At some point in the trip the oilmen got well oiled and invited everyone else on the plane to come up and party with them and they were buying! The pilot had to come on the intercom and ask people to return to their seats as the plane was becoming hard to fly with all the weight in the front!!
Like an over endowed lady. All that weight in the front is hard on the backbone.
YEP!!
I think it’s more for safety reasons than anything. Airlines would rather not have passengers milling around unstrapped should turbulence (or even worse) happen.
It was fine, they were all drunk! Everyone know drunks go all floppy and don’t need to be strapped in!
Most of the passengers shown in the lounge weren’t wearing seatbelts then either.
Ah yes, the 1970s, one of those eras with eye searing colors and patterns. Think I might need some mirrored aviator sunglasses to look at those pictures for very long.
I miss Braniff, tha best looking airliner.
Jason, do you like movies about gladiators?
Has he even been in a Turkish prison?
Has he ever seen a grown man naked?
Public lounge? Only behind a velvet rope, paywall, or some other gate keeping status arrangement. Can’t let those tragically common folks spoil it for everybody.
This was before airline deregulation, so even coach wasn’t exactly for common folks.
A Transcon coach flight in the 70s was likely the same price as a business class “bargain” today (4000ish dollars, 500ish dollars back then)
I wonder if anyone has the heart to tell Baldy O’Hawaiianshirt on the right there how far out of his league he is.
Darling, you have to understand, in Britain in the ’60s, you could be a sex symbol and still have bad teeth, no hair too much hair, be middle aged or even a pasty, doughy blob. It didn’t matter. Especially on a 747!
-Mrs Kensington, Austin Powers International Man Of Mystery…kinda
If you need proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsPtoVW7X3g
They never did explain how someone frozen in 1967 could have a Jumbo Jet that didn’t roll out until September 30, 1968…
Oh well. Maybe its a Mojo thing.
I used to travel business class on these though never with access to this feature .!However tho illustrations slow no lie flat seats at that time . Single most important thing when you have a 15 hour flight
I experienced the Continental lounge on a flight in the mid 80s. As I was underage at the time, I wasn’t able to partake of the good stuff.
I feel fortunate that I got to ride upstairs on NWA 747-200s a couple of times. The lounge was long gone by then, but the seating was nice, as was having the dedicated flight attendant for the upper deck.
I also flew in the first class section in the nose, but that was not as cool as climbing that spiral staircase.