L.A Studio Owner Keen To Bring The Pan Am Experience To Vegas

A Hollywood movie studio owner is looking to bring the recreated experience of travelling on a Pan Am double-decker 747 to the Las Vegas Strip.

Talaat Captan, chief executive officer of studio Air Hollywood stated that he is in discussion with casinos on the Strip to set up a reconstructed 100-seater Pan Am plane as a tourist attraction.

Captan and his partner Anthony Toth have created ‘The Pan Am Experience’ which aims to brings alive the experience of travelling on a Pan Am flight circa 1970s.

The use of authentically styled outfits, menu and magazines right down to colognes will provide visitors with a nostalgia-filled experience of travelling in the popular airline which closed in 1991.

Air Hollywood

The re-created plane now located in Las Vegas has so far served as a venue for 400 events such as corporate events and birthday celebrations. It hosts four to six events a month, with two of them being open to the public. Captan now hopes to bring the experience to Las Vegas visitors.

In a statement Captan said

Our client is mature, has been around the world and knows what Pan Am is. This experience is a luxury and is targeted toward people that stay at high-end hotels. People that have money want to do something different

The experience starts with visitors having cocktails at a re-created authentic Pan Am lounge. Passengers board onto a 100-seater Pan Amplane featuring pilots and stewardesses styled in 1970s uniforms. The customers are then served a multi-course meal, depending on the tickets, which could include items like shrimp, vodka, black caviar and chateaubriand. The stewardesses follow the airline’s original practices while serving meals including cutting the meat in the aisles.

Other activities include aviation-themed trivia games and a fashion show of the various Pan Am uniforms. The experience is for three hours and costs $300 per head for the five-course meal with lower-deck seats while the charge is $400 for the six-course meal that is served for the upper-deck seats.

Captan pointed out that the Pan Am Experience was like going back in time, adding that the studio had perfected the experience over the past years of operations and was now ready to provide the same experience on a daily basis. He said that the experience could be enhanced for Las Vegas audiences with use of LED projectors and introducing a sensation of light turbulence.

Captan said that Caesars Entertainment had offered to rent a 10,000 square space for the plane but he had declined as the offer was not attractive enough.

Adrian Sterne

More articles by Adrian Sterne