Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Reader comments reflect the views of the individuals who wrote them, are not reviewed or endorsed by Eye of the Flyer or by any advertiser, and should not be treated as advice. Some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
If you’re a travel enthusiast with a love of history and a cabinet full of glassware (a demographic I suspect is overrepresented among readers here), there’s some unusual barware worth knowing about.
Our friends at Planetags — the folks who make luggage and dog collar tags from the skins of retired airline and military aircraft — now make coasters out of them, too.
(Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer is a Planetags affiliate and may earn a nominal commission if you purchase anything through the links in this post. Planetags did not sponsor, direct, or review this post. I was a Planetags customer and enthusiast before I began a business relationship with them.)
Airline Skin Coasters
Planetags currently sells coaster sets made from retired Delta Air Lines and Qantas aircraft.
The Delta editions come in 747, 757, and 767 versions. (How’s that for difficult choices?)
The Qantas coasters are “crafted from the authentic fuselage skin of four retired Qantas Boeing 747s.”
And how cool are these F-14 Tomcat coasters?!
The Planetags crew sent me a set of the Qantas coasters to test fly.
They’re stylish, and heavier in the hand than you’d expect. My only real complaint: in extremely humid conditions, my glass stuck to the coaster. Annoying, not disqualifying. I still use them regularly — and talk about them to anyone who will listen.
If you’re a nostalgic, romantic nerd like me — or you regularly host them — the appeal isn’t really the coaster. It’s holding a piece of metal that spent two decades over the Pacific and wondering what it saw. Those Qantas 747s ran Sydney to Los Angeles and London for years. The thing under your drink has more flight hours than most pilots.
Final Approach
If you collect aviation pieces and actually want to use them rather than shelve them, the Planetags coaster collection is a fun addition to a bar cart. Good talking point, genuine history, and — humidity quibble aside — they do the job a coaster is supposed to do.
Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Reader comments reflect the views of the individuals who wrote them, are not reviewed or endorsed by Eye of the Flyer or by any advertiser, and should not be treated as advice. Some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
1) I thought this was talking about a roller coaster
2) hope they last longer than the reserve amex made out of a plane
1) That’s funny!
2) My Delta 747 Amexes held up pretty well! I didn’t use them a lot because, well, the Reserves’ points earnings are so meh. Did yours get a workout?
So sad. I lost my wallet that contained my Delta Amex Reserve card made from a retired 747. It was so cool looking and different from the usual boring card. People noticed and commented on it. It got replaced with the boring card indistinguishable from every other credit card. Sigh…
That stinks! I still have my Delta Business Reserve 747 card in my wallet for “just in case” purchases. But I think I’ll get the new design and put the 747 card in a display holder as a cool keepsake.