Labels for Your Luggage: Innovation, Advertising, and Affluence in Commercial Aviation

Labels for Your Luggage
Innovation, Advertising, and Affluence in Commercial Aviation

As the pace of airliner innovation quickened during the 1940s, the airlines began to add more advanced aircraft to their fleets and regularly printed illustrations of the airplanes on their luggage labels. During the decade, four revolutionary airliners entered service. The Boeing Model 314, introduced in 1939 and exclusively operated by Pan American Airways (by 1942, renamed Pan American World Airways), was one of the largest and most advanced flying boats in the world at that time and inaugurated Trans-Atlantic service. A label featured the 314 with a Yankee clipper ship of the 1800s, equating the airliner with maritime adventure, romance, and American ingenuity, a continuous theme promoted by Pan American.

TWA (Transcontinental and Western Air) and Pan American introduced the Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner in 1940. It was the first pressurized airliner to go into service and was able to fly into the stratosphere in order to take advantage of the jet stream and avoid turbulent weather. The Lockheed Model 047 Constellation and Douglas DC-4 were introduced during World War II and served well as military transports, and then saw widespread commercial use during the post-war years of the late 1940s. Both were the largest airliners widely available at the time, nearly triple the passenger capacity of the DC-3, and featured a pioneering nose-wheel assembly.

Beginning in the 1930s, major airlines provided flight packets to the passengers to promote services and disseminate information in a single, easy-to-carry item that could also be kept as a souvenir. Packets usually consisted of a sturdy pocket folder, a timetable, and other informational brochures, along with several luggage labels housed in a glassine or waxed envelope. Passengers were encouraged to decorate their luggage with the labels as they pleased, and label envelopes were often printed with prompts such as "labels for your luggage," or "a souvenir of your flight."

[image top]
Delta Airlines Miami luggage label 1950s
paper, ink
San Francisco Airport Museums
Gift of Thomas G. Dragges in memory of Robert May
2001.109.127
R2009.1101.001

[image bottom]
TWA (Trans World Airline) air hostess and Lockheed Constellation luggage label c. 1948
paper, ink
San Francisco Airport Museums
Gift of John Z. Geralis
1998.151.001 d
R2009.1101.048

©2009 by the San Francisco Airport Commission. All rights reserved.