Real Photo of Economy Class Airline Seating on Boeing 747 in 1960s?

Claim:

An image shared to social media in mid-September 2024 authentically showed economy class seating on a Boeing 747 aircraft in the 1960s.

Rating:

In mid-September 2024, an image allegedly depicting the economy class cabin of a PanAm Boeing 747 aircraft in the 1960s was shared on Facebook. The photo showed a wide airplane cabin with two aisles, spacious legroom, and a flight attendant pushing a cart of food. 

The post had amassed more than 154,000 reactions and 23,000 shares as of this writing.

(Vintage U.S. Memories Facebook page)

One user, who appeared to believe the picture’s veracity, commented: “Far better than for US First Class today.”

Another wrote: “When class actually had class, now its sardine class.”

Other examples of the image and claim appeared on Reddit in 2013, 2014 and 2017.

However, while the picture did not show signs of digital manipulation, it also did not show an authentic aircraft. The photo was in fact staged to show the interior of a 747 for marketing purposes, which is why we have rated it as miscaptioned.

Joe Sutter, author, engineer, and manager of the 747 project at Boeing, confirmed the image was a “mock-up” in his 2006 book, “747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation.” Likewise, a Boeing representative corroborated this information and confirmed the image was used for promotional purposes. 

(“747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation”)

A similar, color picture — with a different arrangement of the same passengers — was available via Getty Images, where it was credited as being from the 1969 Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, France. The Paris Air Show has been held since 1909, and in Le Bourget since 1959. Snopes contacted the exhibition to confirm whether these two images were taken at the same event. We will update this article if we receive a response.

Another similar photo was found on Britannica’s website. This example was captioned: “A view of a mocked-up interior passenger space for the Boeing 747 during the late 1960s.” That same version also appeared on Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum website, featuring passengers in the same seats as the Getty image but in different poses.  

While the picture in the Facebook and Reddit posts was a mock-up, Getty does have authentic interior images from the early days of the Boeing 747, such as this one from the aircraft’s first flight from New York to the U.K. in January 1970: 

(Getty Images)

Design, technology, and science website Gizmodo also debunked the photo in the Facebook and Reddit posts in 2013 and 2014.

Snopes has fact-checked other claims related to air travel of decades past, including vintage photos of Scandinavian Airlines meals, early 20th century airplanes using wicker chairs as passenger seats, and whether or not airliners of the 1980s had movable armrests. 

Sources