Air Canada Boeing 747s had dancefloors in their jets in the 1970s but it all ended for a very boring reason

Air Canada Boeing 747s had dancefloors in their jets in the 1970s, meaning passengers could literally dance in the sky during long-haul flights.

The upper deck of the enormous aircraft was transformed into a nightclub complete with a mirrored wall and enough space to bust out some seriously questionable moves.

It sounds like the kind of thing that would make flying today infinitely more exciting, but the party didn’t last very long.

Air Canada eventually discovered a very boring reason why putting paying passengers in seats made a lot more sense than giving them a dancefloor.

Air Canada’s Boeing 747s really had dancefloors

When Boeing’s 747 airplane entered commercial service in 1970, its distinctive upper deck gave airlines a strange new piece of real estate to play with.

Instead of immediately filling it with rows of seats, some airlines turned the space into lounges, bars and restaurants.

Air Canada went one step further.

In 1971, the airline introduced a dancefloor on the upper deck of its Boeing 747s flying transatlantic routes between Toronto and Europe.

The space reportedly featured a mirrored wall and dancefloors, giving passengers the chance to get up, socialize and dance while thousands of feet above the ground.

And this wasn’t just a case of passengers putting on some music through their headphones and awkwardly dancing beside their seats.

A former Air Canada flight attendant, Heather Tregaskes, recalled that the airline’s stewardesses would sometimes even dance with customers.

It was basically a nightclub in the sky, back when flying was still treated as a glamorous experience rather than something involving a battle for the armrest and a desperate attempt to fit a carry-on into an overhead bin.

There was even a rather unfortunate naming idea floating around.

According to aviation historian Ross Smyth, Air Canada’s marketing department reportedly considered calling the space the “Mile High Club” before realizing that the phrase already had a very different and decidedly more risqué meaning.

Some early planes even had upright pianos and live bands.

Like all good things, the disco had to come to an end

Sadly, the airborne disco wasn’t destined to become a permanent part of commercial aviation.

The dancefloors reportedly lasted for only about a year after the 747 entered Air Canada’s fleet before it was scrapped.

And the reason was much less exciting than the idea itself.

Airlines eventually realized that every square foot of cabin space had the potential to generate revenue if it contained a paying passenger seat – a dancefloor could make the experience more memorable, but it couldn’t sell another ticket.

That same realization affected other airlines experimenting with the 747’s upper deck: Pan Am famously used the space as a first-class restaurant, while Qantas created a lounge known as the Captain’s Club.

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But as airlines became increasingly focused on efficiency and maximizing passenger capacity, those glamorous lounges largely disappeared in favor of seats.

The timing also wasn’t particularly helpful for extravagant airline gimmicks as the 1970s brought major increases in fuel prices, making airlines increasingly conscious of operating costs and the economics of every part of their aircraft.

So, while today’s passengers are squeezing themselves into increasingly optimized cabins, there was once a time when flying across the Atlantic could involve grabbing a drink, heading upstairs and dancing with a stranger.

The Boeing 747’s upper-deck nightclub may have been short-lived, but it remains very important in our hearts.