A blast from air travel past

Plane travel used to be so different.  It was almost a social event.  People would dress in their finest to take to the skies.  Nowadays, people are more likely to wear their “comfy” clothes and plug themselves into their smart devices.

Qantas has opened the archive to give us a glimpse of how travel used to be by sharing some of their vintage in-flight safety manuals from the past.  Today’s safety cards are kept to universal shapes and images so that there is no need to translate them and they can still be understood by people of any language.

In the past, the manuals were more informative, and some even told a story as they were the age before in-flight entertainment.  It would be hard to fathom an organisation like Qantas showing crash survivors looking like they are on holiday in the survival raft in the modern era.

Not to mention telling people they should extinguish their cigarettes before using the plane toilets.

The manuals of the time gave the passengers useful information while also giving them something to read on the flights.  It was a friendly reminder that in case there was a need to “ditch” the plane that women should leave behind jewellery and men should loosen their collars and ties before disembarking in the emergency.

Times have changed, but the need for something to read on the plane hasn’t.

Do you remember these classic manuals?  How has travel changed to you?