Here’s a picture trip report from a flight onboard a Pan Am Boeing 707 from June of 1969.
Granted, I wasn’t born yet in 1969, but my mouth dropped when I saw these pictures from Grandma Weekly Flyer’s first international trip to Scotland and London.
Grandma Weekly Flyer had just graduated high school and signed up to take a trip across the Atlantic with some class mates including her twin sister.
Here’s Grandma Weekly Flyer with her Pan Am bag waiting to go to the airport.
The flight would be a first international flight and the first with Pan Am on their Boeing 707.
I’m pretty sure this is a Boeing 707 after comparing it to the picture below. What do you think, was I right?
Their international gateway was Washington and they arrived in Scotland. I couldn’t track down the route or flight number so not exactly sure which route it was.
They toured Scotland seeing some pretty cool sites.
Then they took a train down to London and visited the city for a few days.
Bottom Line
A trip with Pan Am in the summer of 1969 with your sister and classmates is a pretty cool way to celebrate graduation from high school. Grandma Weekly flyer got to travel in a jet with Pan Am at the height of the jet set heyday in the 60s. I’m just glad I saw the photos and heard the story behind it.
Did you ever get to take a flight on a Pan Am jet? What was it like and where did you go?
Sign up for Email || Twitter || Facebook || Tips & Tricks
Hotel Offers || Airline Offers || Bank Offers || Cash Back Offers
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
Sign up for Email || Twitter || Facebook |
Hotel Offers || Airline Offers || Bank Offers || Cash Back Offers
Never flew Pan Am, but I did fly Piedmont…. the real one. Does that count? 🙂 I was born a year after this. I’m not sure I should be this much older than you.
I did not fly Pan Am but flew TWA from LHR to JFK in 1971 in 747. There were only 75 passengers and the capacity was about 300.
Oh wow it really makes it look glorious. And it seemed like they still dressed up so nicely for a trip!
Our dear friend, neighbor and travel buddy use to fly the 707 for PanAm in the 60’s and 70’s. He has some incredible stories that would make for an interesting blog post — especially the one about procuring caviar in Iran and bringing it back to NY only to have it slide off of a window sill where it was placed to keep it cold!
June 1969 was also the first time I flew Pan Am!!!
Incredible pics.. love the Pan AM bag!
Grandma was pretty darn cute!
And I still have my Pan Am Club card. Old guy.
Pan Am 001 and 002, flights that used to circumnavigate the globe. We did London to Istanbul, Istanbul to Karachi, and Istanbul to Beirut back in the early seventies when I was a kid and living all over the world because of my dad’s job. It was a 747.
I flew Pan Am from London to the US in the mid-80s. I think I still have my boarding pass. I was on a high school trip so I saved everything.
I too remember Pan Am 01 an 02 the around the world flights– did them many times in 1st class — they were wonderful , something like SQ is now — they served Iranian caviar with all the condiments back then My first trip was also in 1969-70 –still have playing cards and other trinkets from Pan Am– like the song says –“Those were the days my friend …..”
It was also the time when many airlines tried to out do each other to attract passengers
F.F. gave you a coupon in the mail for a flight and attached to it was a car rental and hotel voucher — to get credit for a flight had to fill on a paper form that got attached to you ticket
Memories. i started commuting across the Atlantic in 1972 on a BOAC 707. Now I commute from Connecticut to Mississippi on a Delta MD88.
This is getting old, but then so am I. 68 candles on the cake next time.
Great story!!! This Thursday, I will be posting about my own trip on Pan Am to London. Care to link our blogs together?
Amazing, I am writing about this very trip now, 49 years ago. I was one of the exchange students who flew the other direction on a PanAm 707.
We departed in May 1969 from Preswick in Scotland and landed in New York, at JFK I think, and had three days there. Then onto Louisville with our exchange student, living with the family for about three weeks, and finally 3 days in Washington DC. We flew back in a PanAm 707 from JFK to Prestwick, Scotland.
It was my first flight and my first time out of the UK. I can tell you we either filled every seat on 707, or very nearly did. I had caviar on crackers for the first time, though they must have given me more than that. What was memorable was that we saw a film on the plane, yes, in 1969. It was Maggie Smith in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’! and it was before it was released in cinemas the UK – or so I was told!
Our exchange students, and your Granda Flyer, visited Scotland about mid-August that year so that after seeing some of Scotland they were able to attend the first classes of the final School in the first week of September.
I loved seeing your photos – I just wish I had some! And I wish I had not lost contact with my exchange partner and his family.
Thanks,
Morgan Findlay