As air travel around the world continues to make it's race to the bottom of both price and service it's good to remember that there was a time when luxury, comfort and technology surpassed bums in seats (airline terminology for seat the capacity ratios). If you were traveling commercial you got top of the line bragging rights by just stating you were Traveling "Concorde". Elizabeth Taylor purportedly had a regular seat (1B) that she was assigned. The ticket price was the same as a first class ticket on another airline but the cities served were very limited to pretty well London, Paris and New York.

Much to my surprise the "Russians" were also planning a similar market battle for supersonic luxury air travel with their TU 144. This somehow never seemed to be a good strategy though, since it was never part of the Stallinist plan to have it's citizen's travel around the world at the speed of sound "in luxury".

You can see my ancient flight here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjgnKc-7PSM

Produced and Hosted by: Percy von Lipinski
Edited by: Julian van Blankenstein

Still images courtesy of Wikipedia Creative Commons License.