Talaat Captan’s part in creating the Pan Am Experience is featured in a new TechEBlog article, published on October 25, 2026. Writer Bill Smith tells the story of Anthony Toth, the aviation collector who spent decades rebuilding a 1970s Pan Am Boeing 747 cabin. The article explains how that private passion became a public attraction once Toth met Captan, the founder of Air Hollywood. Here is a summary of the article, with background on the experience it describes.
A collector’s cabin
Most of the article is about Toth’s long project. His fascination with Pan Am started when he flew to Europe on one of the airline’s 747s as a five-year-old. Years later, working in airline sales, he saved Pan Am items that were about to be thrown away and stored them until he had space to use them.
The collection grew in stages. Toth first built a cabin in his garage in Redondo Beach, with 18 first class seats wired to work with original Pan Am headsets. Visitors there were given replica boarding cards and peanuts in original packaging. In 2012 he moved the project into a 3,000-square-foot warehouse. The article says the set there was about 60 feet long, with an upper-deck lounge, a first class galley unit brought in from the Mojave Desert and 26 Clipper Class seats. The fuselage shell came from a former Japan Airlines 747, and the side panels came from a DC-10. Former Pan Am flight attendants began coming to his gatherings in their old uniforms.
Where Talaat Captan comes in
The turning point in the story is 2013, when Toth met Captan. By then Captan had spent well over a decade running Air Hollywood, the aviation-themed film studio he founded in 1998 after a difficult airport shoot on the film Ground Control. That story is told on this site in How Talaat Captan Turned a Ground Control Setback into Air Hollywood.
According to TechEBlog, the two men licensed the Pan Am name together and moved the whole interior to Air Hollywood’s studio. There it was rebuilt with better acoustics, programmable lighting and air conditioning. These are the practical improvements a working studio can provide and a warehouse usually cannot.
The partnership made sense. Air Hollywood already built airplane cabins for film and television, kept a large collection of real aviation parts and props, and knew how to make a set on the ground feel like a flight. A closer look at that craft is in How Talaat Captan’s Air Hollywood Films Airplane Scenes Without a Real Plane, and the prop side of the business is covered in Talaat Captan and Air Hollywood Props.
Opening night and the guest experience
The article says the Pan Am Experience opened to the public on October 18, 2014, with 32 guests on its first night, some of whom had travelled from out of town to attend. The idea was to recreate a long-haul flight from the golden age of jet travel rather than simply show off a set.
TechEBlog describes what guests experience. A multi-course meal is served from trolleys on real china. Period-accurate music plays, there is an in-flight movie, and the cabin crew work the aisles as they would have on a 1970s flight. Each guest leaves with a genuine boarding card. The article adds that Toth still often walks the cabin in a captain’s uniform during events.
How the story fits with earlier coverage
The Pan Am Experience has drawn press attention for more than a decade. CNN Travel’s 2019 feature on the dinner flight is summarized in CNN Travel on Talaat Captan and the Pan Am Experience. The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s report on plans to bring the experience to the Strip is covered in Las Vegas Review-Journal on Talaat Captan’s Pan Am Experience plan.
The TechEBlog piece adds something those stories mostly skip: the long build-up before the experience opened. It shows how one collector’s devotion and a studio founder’s resources came together. Toth brought the collection and the knowledge of Pan Am’s history. Captan brought a studio designed for building airplane interiors, along with the business experience to turn a private cabin into a public attraction.
From recreation to revival
Captan’s connection to Pan Am has since gone beyond the experience. He is now one of the executives working to bring Pan American World Airways back, as described in Talaat Captan joins leadership team working to bring Pan Am back. More about his role is on the Pan Am Experience founder page, and key dates are collected in Talaat Captan and Air Hollywood: A Timeline of Milestones.
The full article, with photos and an embedded video, is available at TechEBlog (link below). More coverage of Talaat Captan’s work is collected on the Press page.
