When Flying Was Fabulous

Off Season around Aspen usually means hopping on a plane and seeing what's happening in the big wide world. It’s always fun watching Facebook fill with photos of far-off jungles, unfamiliar mountain tops, and interesting new dishes.  

While there are some very stylish first class cabins and private planes that get you to where you want to go, one often forgets the early days of flying were exercises in design and branding as much as they were in service and safety. 

Before deregulation, they had to be. With subsidized ticket prices, airlines needed to do more than just offer a cheap seat. "Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet" by Keith Lovegrove wrote a wonderful book that goes into the highly designed world of mile-high service. 

It's all about elegance in the '50s and early '60s. Above, dinner is served on a Lufthansa first-class flight to Munich in 1958.  

Hard to believe this is what United Airlines used to look like in 1968 

The orange, the leopard print, the Star War's-esque lighting panels ... yikes ... perhaps things went a little too far.  

And speaking of too far ... those short-shorts.