On January 25, 1959, at a few minutes after 4 p.m., a Boeing 707 landed at New York’s Idlewild Airport (now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport). American Airlines Flight 2 from Los Angeles had just completed the first transcontinental jet trip.
Although it wasn’t the first jet flight (the first was BOAC from London to Rome in 1952) and it wasn’t the first nonstop transcontinental flight (TWA made the flight from Los Angeles to New York in 1953), it was a major milestone, cutting more than three hours off the flight time and saving passengers the loud noise of the propeller engine. Passengers on the return flight recalled that “nearly everyone was tipsy, and the earlier flight from Los Angeles seemed to be, at the very least, an intoxicating experience.”
Daniel Solon, who worked at American Airlines’ public relations department in 1959, said that the flight attendants, who were very attractive then, made it a good party. Everyone had a good time.
Alcohol and smoke flowed freely. The food was also first class. Highlights of the menu included “fresh Maine lobster with capers, filet mignon, herb-buttered fan tan rolls and macaroon ice cream balls with brandied apricot sauce.” Back in those days, coach passengers got the same food as first class according to Solon.
Former Los Angeles Times on-flight correspondent Cordell Hicks recalled that “breakfast was served at 10:15 a.m. over Grand Junction, Colo., cocktails at 11:26 a.m. over Des Moines and lunch at 12:30 p.m. over Cleveland.”
Of course, the ticket was expensive back then. A round-trip coach class ticket cost $238, or $1,743 in today’s dollars.
On the other hand, the flights were faster too. It was 4 1/2 hours to New York and 5 1/2 hours to Los Angeles due to headwinds. Today, due to the traffic, flights generally take an hour longer in each direction.
Poet Carl Sandburg, who was 81 at the time he took the flight, wrote about it in the Ladies Home Journal.
“You look out of the window at the waves of dark and light clouds looking like ocean shorelines, and you feel as if you are floating away in this pleasantly moving room, like the basket hanging from the balloon you saw with a visiting circus when you were a boy. You remember how the man in the balloon basket wore red and gold tights, and was bright against the sun as he jumped out of the basket, and how a big white umbrella opened up over him, and you heard the other boys holler, ‘That’s the parachute!’ ”
“You have let your mind wander again,” the essay continued, “and you wake up now in this room where you move through rain and come out of it into a clear blue sky with a cloudland below you, and you say to yourself, ‘My, that’s purty to look at.’ ”
