France’s Bizarre "Flying Egg" That Fit Two Stories of Luxury

Decades before the Boeing 747, Air France operated one of the strangest airliners ever built — the Breguet 763 Deux-Ponts, a double-decker "flying egg" with two full passenger cabins stacked one on top of the other. The upper deck had wide windows and sunlight. The lower deck had small portholes, cargo next door, and soundproofing one passenger called "symbolic." Air France didn't want it. The French government forced them to fly it anyway — and for one extraordinary decade, this bizarre, bulbous aircraft became the lifeline connecting France to Algeria, carrying over a million passengers across the Mediterranean without losing a single soul. Then a war erupted, the jet age arrived, and a million people had to flee their homes. This is the story of the airplane that carried them all — and what happened when the world it served disappeared. Only three survive today. One of them is an abandoned restaurant in a field outside Paris.