Flying in Style

By Bacilio Mendez II -- JCK Online, 7/1/2008 2:00:00 AM

Pan American Airways pioneered commercial air travel in the 1920s and helped transform it into a glamorous mode of transportation. Pan Am also launched the era of jet travel with its Boeing 707 service on the North Atlantic, the first pure-jet service by a U.S. airline. With a longer fuselage, bigger wings, higher-powered engines, and increased fuel capacity, the 707 could travel farther and more smoothly than any other aircraft.

The inaugural Pan Am Boeing flight took place Oct. 26, 1958, on Clipper America, covering the 3,634 miles from New York to Paris in 8 hours and 41 minutes.

Twenty-five years later, Pan Am commemorated the historic flight by duplicating it. A Boeing 707 was stripped to bare metal and repainted to match the color scheme used in 1958, and popular magazines and newspapers from '58 were placed in the seat pockets. Movies from that year were shown on board, and the dinner menu was taken from the original, created by Maxim's of Paris.

Tokens & Coins acquired a section of the fuselage from the now-retired 707 and used the metal to create three unique cufflink designs, inspired by the shape of the plane's wing ribs, rounded rectangular windows, and flush rivets. Each pair incorporates the plane's feather-light aluminum and original sky blue paint. The cufflinks are a throwback to a time when flying on a jetliner was the epitome of luxury, an event for which gentlemen wore suits, ties, and, of course, cufflinks.