Boeing Magazine’s October 1949 issue profiled the company’s new 377 Stratocruiser, which included a lounge, seen in the image above, where passengers could relax with a cocktail. “The men behind the Stratocruisers,” said the magazine, “set out to make passengers more than merely comfortable. They set out to coddle them.”

Pan Am was the first carrier to fly Stratocruisers, with a flight in 1949 from San Francisco to Honolulu. This photograph, by Ron Davies, is on display until July 2015 at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, as part of its exhibition Hawaii by Air. The show celebrates the role of air travel in transforming Hawaii, one of the most remote places on earth.

airandspace.si.edu

Slideshow photographs: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution; Ron Davies Photo Collection; Smithsonian Institution; Hawaii State Archives/Pan-Pacific Press Bureau; University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Library

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