Civil aviation was born in 1919, but it was not until after the Second World War that air traffic really took off. Tickets were very expensive, however, and air travel in the 1950s was a luxury reserved for wealthy tourists and businessmen.

The legendary Pan American World Airways, better known as Pan Am, epitomised the elegance and glamour of the period. Concorde, the legendary supersonic aircraft inaugurated in 1969, marked the apogee of this golden age, which came to an end in the 1980s with the successive appearances of the Boeing 707 (around 150 seats) and, above all, the Boeing 747 (300 to 450 seats).

At a time when the climate crisis and the concept of flight shame are prompting more and more people to give up air travel, we take a look back at the decades when the skies belonged to an elite.