Vintage photos of flying show things you'd never get away with on a plane today
- Smoking on planes wasn't fully banned in the US until 2000.
- Passengers used to be able to use sharp knives during meals.
Things like smoking, touring the cockpit, and using a steak knife used to be commonplace on planes in the 1950s. Today, rules for passengers and cabin crews are more strict.
These vintage photos show passengers in the midst of activities that would definitely get them banned from flights today.
Today's pilots must follow rules about alcohol consumption, but that wasn't the case in the early days of flying.
Irish aviator Lady Mary Heath took a swig of whisky before flying at an altitude of 20,000 feet in 1928. The first female commercial pilot in the UK, Heath became the first person to fly the 10,000-mile-trip from South Africa to London in 1928, according to the Irish Emigration Museum.
The rules about pilots consuming alcohol were less strict then. Today, on-duty pilots cannot have a blood alcohol level of 0.04 or higher or consume alcohol within eight hours of a flight, according to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.
Before laptops were invented, some workers brought their typewriters along on flights.
In 1955, a KLM secretary was photographed hard at work dictating notes on her typewriter from her airplane seat.
Smoking used to be commonplace on flights.
When booking a ticket, passengers could choose between smoking and non-smoking sections.
Flight attendants would even help passengers light their cigars.
Smoking on planes wasn't fully banned by the federal government until 2000, Insider's Thomas Pallini reported.
Back in the day, people ate airplane meals with metal cutlery.
While real silverware is still available in some business and first-class sections, most airlines serve meals with plasticware.
Some passengers even brought large carving knives onto flights, which wouldn't be permitted today.
Metal knives were banned on planes after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, The Chicago Tribune reported. Now, only plastic or round-bladed butter knives are allowed in carry-on luggage.
The cockpit was once a place where pilots and flight attendants offered tours and photo-ops.
Cockpit doors did have locks prior to 9/11, but after the attacks, the doors were required to be grenade-proof and only unlockable from the inside, according to the FAA.
Now, posing for photos with members of the flight crew in the cockpit is a rare occurrence.
Pilots do occasionally allow young children and aviation enthusiasts into the cockpit during boarding or after landing, but not mid-flight, One Mile At A Time reported in 2022.
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