Airline food.

These days it’s not something many people would make a special trip to eat.

And, unless you’re lucky enough to be flying in the upfront cabins on the best airlines on their most competitive routes, it’s a good chance that you won’t even be offered anything more than a cookie and soft drink during your flight.

But in the decades before airline deregulation, during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, airlines could only offer similar flights at similar prices.

“They needed to differentiate themselves by the services they offered in each class, said Dennis Sharp, Curator of Aviation at the SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

And over-the-top inflight meals was one of ways airlines competed.

For example, says Sharp, a first-class TWA Royal Ambassador menu from the 1960s features scallops and mushrooms, sirloin steak and lobster Thermidor.

A Pan Am menu from 1973 includes hors d’oeuvres, grilled lamp chops, Kobe beef and braised salmon.

The Golden Age of airline meals returns. For 2 nights.

Portland, OR-based Bill Oakley, a former “Simpsons” head writer whose creativity is now focused on fun food events, has a hankering for the gourmet meals he never got to eat during what has been called the Golden Age of Air Travel.

So he pored over thousands of airline menus online and in museum archives. He located and read the few books written about early airline meals.

And after sifting through his favorites, he created a 7-course culinary event to be held over two nights in the pre-security beer hall, Loyal Legion PDX, at Portland International Airport on Feburary 20 and 21, 2026.

Loyal Legion Chef, Marcus Hilliker, worked with Oakley to create a menu where each course draws on airline meals from the 1930s through to the final flight of the Concorde in November, 2003.

Oakley is looking forward to serving as host of the dinner and sharing a humorous slideshow about he’s learned about airline meals and in-flight menus.

He didn’t want us to share too many details about the specific dishes before the event so as not to ruin the surprise and drama for those who have purchased tickets for the sold-out event.

But the Stuck at the Airport food review team will be attending the event Friday night and we’ll share more details later.

What’s on the menu?

We can tell you that the 7-courses will include a very unusual soup, the snacks ‘stewardessess’ dressed in Gay Nineties costumes served passengers flying on Mohawk Airlines’ men-only “Gaslight Service” flights in the early 1960s and, of course, lobster and caviar.

And one course will also be based on the meal service that event-sponsor Alaska Airlines offered during a brief period in late 1960s and early 1970s when the carrier operated commercial charter flights between Alaska and the U.S.S.R.