1 February, 2018

All the insane ideas for planes that never took off

By Hannah Edensor

It’s mid-way through a 13-hour flight. Your legs are stiff and you have too much energy to sleep. So you head to the in-flight disco room.

Sadly, flights like these definitely don’t exist – unless you count the Emirates inflight bar, that is. But it doesn’t even come close to an Austin Powers-style lounge or a luxury on-board restaurant.

No, we aren’t joking – these were real ideas for real planes in the early 1970s, when jumbo planes were just being born.

Luckily, there are still photos of designs that never made it off the ground, and AirlineRatings.com have collected some of the best (and funniest) vintage images.

Geoffrey Thomas, editor of AirlineRatings.com, told CNN Travel that the reasoning behind the design pitches was that the new planes were much, much larger than their previous counterparts.

“These new aircraft were double the size of the ones they replaced and thus there was space to be filled,” he said. “However they did not last long.”

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The brainchild behind the inflight disco was McDonnell Douglas, a US aerospace maufacotring corporation which is now part of Boeing.

Sadly, the disco idea never ~took off~, as the aircraft didn’t receive any orders.

“The jumbo disco was simply impractical, as was the gym because of turbulence,” Thomas told CNN Travel. “The last thing you want is a drum kit or dumbbell flying through the cabin.”

Boeing also devised a number of odd ideas for using the increased space in the new jumbos, including a tiger themed lounge. We have no words.

And if tiger themed lounges were 70s enough, what about a downstairs lounge straight off the set of an Austin Powers movie?

Surprisingly, an underfloor lounge ended up making it onboard the Pacific Southwest Airlines Lockheed Tristar in the early 1970s – though it wasn’t for very long.

Windows on the ceiling were also advertised (why? We don’t know) as was a duty free shop inside the plane, however both ideas ended up falling short.

Inflight restaurants were even designed – just like on-board a first class train.

Some ideas, like a bedroom suite, were rejected back then but have resurfaced now via airlines like Singapore Airlines and Emirates – in the form of their first class suites.

We’ll never have aisles as wide as these ones though. Or an inflight disco. Sigh.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

1970s jumbo jets Boeing McDonnell Douglas