Delta Airlines Museum Brings Back Glory Days of Air Travel ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - At the world's largest airport, the world's biggest airline maintains a nod to its humble beginnings. Known as the "Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum," its prized Douglas DC-3 airplane is housed in a hanger on the airport campus.

Recently, airplane buff and WABE reporter Jim Burress toured the plane and takes us along for the "ride:"

1940. Delta would soon move its headquarters to Atlanta. And on Christmas Eve its first passenger-carrying DC-3 lifts 21 travelers into to the air.

(music fades in: "Straighten Up and Fly Right.")

For the next two decades, Delta and the DC-3 were synonymous. It's the plane that made carrying people profitable. But jets took over, and the DC-3 faded away.

That's until a group of retired Delta employees decided to create a company museum. Their prize exhibit-- "Ship 41" (as it's known), that original DC-3. When they found it, the plane was rusted and carrying cargo in Puerto Rico, says Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum director Tiffany Meng:


"It actually did lose radio contact at one point, but it landed in Miami before the coast guard had to go out. Once it got to Miami, it was fixed up enough to come to Atlanta. Once it came here, it was completely taken apart, restored, and put back together. So what you're looking at is basically a brand-new 1940 DC-3."

And it's quite the sight. Its polished body and large, gleaming Hamilton Standard propellers command attention unlike any modern flight machine.


"So let's go ahead and go inside. We are going to put on gloves and shoe booties. And then we'll take a look on the interior and I'll point out a little more once we get up in there."

Ducking into the rear of the cabin, I'm transported back in time. The isle is a steep climb. The ivory-trimmed and green seats are huge by today's standards, and the overhead bins handle little more than a hat or two. Passengers had to travel light.

"We started handing out barf bags because people actually get sick on it."

That's Joe Maknauskas, a retired Delta mechanic and one of the volunteers who restored the DC-3. He says as beautiful as the plane might be, if you flew on one today don't shouldn't expect modern creature comforts.

"I tell em it's low and slow and bumpy. And in the summer time it's hot and in the winter it's cold. A lot of people would get on there and we'd get up and start bumping around and they'd say oh, I don't feel so good!' "(laughs)

A lot's changed at Delta since "Ship 41" first carried passengers. Flight attendants no longer have to be registered nurses. Flying from Atlanta to Ft. Worth no longer takes six hours. And museum director Tiffany Meng says passengers are a bit different.

BURRESS: "Do you know anything about the demographics of kind of your average passenger who might have flown in the early 1940s?"

MENG: "Probably a middle-aged white male business man. And then into the late 40s and into the 50s, you started to see more families. It was mostly affluent people, because it was a new mode of transportation it was relatively expensive to fly. But you were flying to destinations you would not have been able to go to otherwise."

Today's jets go farther, faster and do it cheaper. But not in as much style as Ship 41. Jim Burress, WABE News.

(The Delta Heritage Museum opens its DC-3 for tours on the second Tuesday of the month.) © Copyright 2012, WABE