I have always felt that there is something cosy and homey about the color schemes of the 1970s. Dark and powerful earth colors dominated the design of the corporate, home and commercial western world. From shopping malls, to the basement den to the airport. So, follow us as we visit some airports of the period to experience what checking in was like in the 1970s....
Every mid-century maven knows Pan Am. All swank jet-setting dreams began with the famed airline. The first to employ luxury jetliners (Boeing 707s in 1958 and Boeing 747s in 1970), Pan Am was one of the founders of the commercial Jet Age. With 86 destination countries on all six major continents at its peak in 1968, the Pan Am name was synonymous with style, luxury,...
In 1964 my father accepted a job as Press Secretary for Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, so my family left the Arizona desert outside of Phoenix for the foothills of the great Blue Ridge Mountains of Fairfax, Virginia, approximately thirty miles from Washington D.C. and approximately thirty miles from the newly emerging Dulles International Airport that straddled Fairfax and Loudoun Counties. Northern Virginia was in...
For those of you who are waiting to get away over the summer, here’s some inspiration. This “Look at life” video clip from The Rank Organisation dated May 1964, tells us about air travel in England from Heathrow Airport featuring classic BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) and BEA airplanes. Look at Life was a regular British series of short documentary films of which over 500...
I remember as a child, the huge propeller driven airliners starting up at the Cleveland Airport. In the dark blue December twilight, clouds of fire and smoke bellowed from those huge radial engines as they cranked over. Machines as living creatures. Angry tethered dragons. With names like Douglas, Constellation, Viscount and Convair. These were the brothers of the thundering machines that had rained bombs on Hitler’s Germany...
A one hour long documentary telling the story of how Pan American World Airways kickstarted the jet-age and shrank the globe. Real-life ‘Pan Am girls’ recall a high-life of luxury and glamour; rubbing shoulders with celebrity passengers, international romances and having to wear the now infamous girdle. Stars of the jet-age such as Robert Vaughn and Mary Quant remember the food, fashion and girls that...
It was Saint Augustine who said that “The World is a Book and those who don’t travel read only a page”. Before I got into radio I travelled on the Professional Tennis circuit and I would say that I consider myself a well seasoned traveller. People have often asked me what makes a great traveller. Well it’s a pretty simple equation really, firstly you need...
