The San Diego Air & Space Museum has a large collection of playing cards that were given to passengers when they were traveling by air.  It might take a while to understand why the airlines would hand out playing cards, but when your smartphone runs out of battery on a long flight, one can quickly see why....the cards provided a diversion in a time before in-flight entertainment. 

In the "good old days" you could pass time by sleeping....

....

or one could read.....

while some preferred to stare off into space until....

your yummy meal arrived....

still others passed the time with drinks.....

but nothing would make the time fly like playing cards! 

The curatorial collection contains over 30 decks of cards from a variety of airlines, both foreign and domestic.  Most the cards in our collection are from airlines that are no longer around:

Ozark, Universal, TWA and National are all long gone.

But many of the cards represent carriers that you can still fly today:

But Hawaiian, Delta, Singapore and Qantas are all airlines that are flying high! 

You can check out many of our other cards here...and while you are at it, you can take a peek at our match collection, cause yep,....the airlines past out matches....and cigarettes to travelers! 

"Sir would you like a pack of camels to blow on your wife?"