Pan Am: The Glory Days

There was an era when travelling by plane meant dressing in your finest, pulling on the white gloves, and expecting to be swathed in the kind of glamour and top-notch service that you’d find in New York City’s finest restaurants. Though those days have long been replaced by travelers in cargo shorts and fanny packs, and flustered flight attendants handing out $10 sandwiches on overcrowded jumbo jets, the memory of the golden age of flying still lingers. And chief among the gilded carriages of the skyways was Pan American World Airways, which prided itself on prompt service, pretty stewardesses, and arguably the most skilled pilots in commercial flight. Come fly with us, as Frank Sinatra might have said, and take a flight back to the heyday of Pan Am.

Here: a Pan Am clipper in 1941.