WITHOUT LEAVING THE GROUND

Board a re- created Pan Am jet and fly straight back to the 1970s

In a most unlikely place, an industrial enclave of warehouses protected by razor wire, the golden age of what was once America’s pre- eminent airline lives again.

For an evening, about two dozen “passengers” will experience the look and feel of Pan American World Airways in its heyday.

They board as first- or business- class fliers in a Pan Am Boeing 747. Only this isn’t a real plane. It’s a mockup of the 747’ s interior painstakingly reconstructed from aircraft salvaged from a desert boneyard, every detail fastidiously re- created be exactly as it appeared in the early 1970s.

On their flight to nowhere, the well- dressed crowd will be wined and dined by stewardesses — the term “flight attendant” wasn’t in wide use yet — decked out in period Galaxy Gold and Superjet Blue. There’s a fashion show of other outfits from the wardrobe, a trivia contest based on Pan Am lore and a five- course meal served on Pan Am china and glassware. ( Yes, it’s actual airline food, trucked in from an airport caterer.)

It’s all part of what is called the Pan Am Experience, a outing staged about once a month that mixes faux airline travel with dinner theater. The flight is aimed at those who yearn for the era, including aviation enthusiasts, Mid- century style mavens and past and present airline employees. Then there are those who are just enchanted by Pan Am as depicted in movies like

starring Leonardo DiCaprio or the shortlived TV drama a few years ago.

Creating the experience was all about the details.

“We worked really hard to get the inside correct,” says Talaat Captan, CEO and founder of Air Hollywood, a film studio that runs the Pan Am Experience as a side business to its core mission, providing the film industry with a site where producers can find accurate aircraft interior mockups. With the 747, the goal was to “capture a look and feel just like Pan Am in the day.”

The experience guests walk to the check- in counter, where a gate agent taps the keys of a period- correct computer terminal and issues an authentic- looking Pan Am boarding pass. Then they mill about in a waiting area that’s actually more of a Pan Am mini- museum, the walls bedecked with Pan Am travel posters.

As if on cue, it’s announced that the flight crew has arrived, and a bevy of stewardesses in uniforms gather outside and ceremoniously parade to the plane. Then the passengers board, taking seats either downstairs or up the winding staircase to the firstclass lounge.

The preflight announcement follows the familiar pattern, with a few exceptions. “In event of loss of cabin pressure, the masks will probably not drop,” a flight attendant says to laughter. And since the lavatories in the plane don’t actually work, anyone needing use a rest room has to step off a plane that is supposedly in flight.

Still, it’s a pretty real experience. The meal service includes cocktails, Pan Am almonds in little silver packages and stewardesses who carve the chateaubriand steak or fork over a chicken breast, along with vegetable and roast potatoes, from a cart. The stewardesses, recruited from the ranks of local actors via a Hollywood casting call, play their roles for all they are worth.

“It’s not work. It’s so much fun,” says Emma Twito of Los Angeles. “It’s neat to go back in time.”

At $ 295 for a single ticket in first class, the Pan Am Experience costs as much as a real flight. But those onboard say it is worth it to step back in time.

Veronica Veglia is ensconced in first class with her husband, Pablo. They’re impressed with the attention to detail: “It has a lot of authenticity,” she says.

Roberta Callaghan, upstairs in the first- class lounge, agrees. A flight attendant on another airline for 38 years, she says the experience “took me back to the old days” when passengers actually dressed up to fly.

When the flight “arrives” and passengers disembark, Captan gives them a tour of Air Hollywood. Spread out over several sound stages in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, it includes aircraft interiors that were seen in TV shows and movies from 1980’ s Airplane! and 2011’ s Bridesmaids.

Captan says the Pan Am Experience resulted from his having heard about an L. A.- based airline executive who amassed a massive collection of Pan Am paraphernalia. Anthony Toth pretty much kept it to himself in a warehouse. His crowning acquisition was the salvaged 747 interior. Now he serves as pilot and host for the experience.

Toth says Pan Am became an obsession starting at age 5, when his parents took him on a Pan Am 747 flight to see his grandparents. “It changed my whole life,” he says. By his early teenage years, Toth had his first pair of Pan Am seats. He took off from there, collecting as much as he could, including full sets of uniforms. Now, he shares it.

Says Toth, “I can’t believe I have people coming to this 747 paying to enjoy this experience.”

“It’s not work. It’s so much fun. It’s neat to go back in time.” “Stewardess” Emma Twito

PHOTOS BY DAN MACMEDAN, USA TODAY Stewardess Chandra Brenner serves up the Chateaubriand in the Clipper Class cabin.

The upper deck of the “aircraft” is designed as a 1970s era first- class lounge.

Stewardess Brenner — the term “flight attendant” came later — performs a safety demonstration, reminding passengers that in an emergency, “the masks will probably not drop.”