Photograph Courtesy of Delta Air Lines
A century ago, aviation looked a lot different than it does today. A seat on Delta Air Lines’ first-ever passenger flight in 1929, the Curtiss-Wright S-6000-B Sedan, cost $90 per person—closer to $1,700 today with inflation. Its route from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson, Mississippi, took five hours to complete. There were five passengers and one pilot, each seated in a narrow green wicker chair that must have creaked like porch furniture in a storm. The wicker seats were bolted to the plane’s floor, and instead of seat belts, there were handholds to grip, providing a small sense of comfort to the earliest passengers who took flight.
That fraying wicker chair—and even a S-6000-B Sedan, as well as many other artifacts from the past century of aviation—can be seen at the Delta Flight Museum. Located next to Delta’s headquarters and the Atlanta airport, the flight museum walks visitors through a century of Delta’s growth. The exhibit spaces, which were renovated earlier this year in time for Delta’s centennial, are housed inside two repurposed airline hangars.
With admission costing $20 for adults and $15 for kids over five (younger kids are free), it’s one of the cheapest boarding tickets in Atlanta. Included with general admission is the chance to board The Spirit of Delta, the company’s first Boeing 767 from the 1980s, still fitted with vintage blue seats and retro TV screens. Outside the museum, visitors can also board a two-story Boeing 747, walk onto its wing, and peer into its claustrophobic pilot’s cockpit.
There’s aviation memorabilia on display amassed from the more than 40 airlines Delta has acquired through the years. Old plane propellers and tiny trinkets hang from the walls, including a 1941 matchbook decorated with miniature flight attendants from when smoking was legal on flights. Another display commemorates the “golden age” of airline food and beverage service, filled with deluxe 1960s dining sets and ads for $1 in-flight martinis.
Photograph Courtesy of Delta Air Lines
Every second Friday of the month, the museum hosts a surplus sale fundraiser where visitors can purchase old terminal boarding seats, drink carts, and vintage banners lauding new Delta flight locations and walk away with their own piece of Delta history. Some aviation enthusiasts even fly in for the event.
If you’re willing to pay an extra $460, up to four people can try their hand at a Boeing 737-200 flight simulator, once used to train pilots. Organizations can host private events at the museum, with the indoor hangars used as large reception halls and the interiors of vintage planes transformed into conference spaces.
This obscure museum is the best way to get up close and personal with the planes that molded Delta into the global airline it is today.
This article appears in our October 2025 issue.
✈️ Back to A Century of Delta and Hartsfield-Jackson
