Back in the olden days when I was a backpacker in Southeast
Asia, we frugal travelers used to fly on cheap charter flights.
International travel was far from ordinary then and Asia was
very exotic. There was no security to speak of
at the airports, where guards dozed beside broken X-ray
machines. Everybody chain-smoked on long-haul flights
and slipped those tiny bottles of gin into their backpacks
for future reference. Travelers traded tips and addresses
across the aisles, and romance bloomed in sleepy airport bars.
Some of the charters were pretty dodgy. On one memorable journey,
the aircraft had been re-engineered to hold several extra
rows of seats so that even quite small people were sitting
with their noses on their knees. We learned from a disenchanted
flight attendant that this private charter intended
to bring back a plane load of lucrative refugees from Vietnam.
For those of us traveling in the other direction, it
was 24 hours of torture. The old plane lumbered across
the Pacific, making several mysterious stops at which no one
seemed to get on or off. They ran out of food, they
ran out of drink and one of the passengers died of a heart
attack. The flight attendants started to mutter darkly among
themselves, ignoring their exhausted, uncomfortable
passengers. We made another stop in
Taipei which did not appear on our tickets, and where
passengers planning to disembark were not permitted to do
so because the charter company had neglected to pay its landing
fees. Onward finally to Hong Kong, where
the flight attendants fled the cabin in open rebellion as
soon as the aircraft landed. By the time the passengers
reached the transfer desk, the company was in receivership.
I guess they left the corpse for the cleaning staff to deal
with.
It was always interesting. Every journey was an adventure.
These days, crossing the Pacific is like taking a very long
bus ride without the view. It’s all so predictable,
from the exhaustive security checks to the innocuous plastic
food. Navigating through Hong Kong’s vast new
airport, I was reminded of a little airstrip
in Sumatra where there were so few travelers that the immigration
officers remembered your name between trips. We’ve
ceased to be individual travelers and become crowds to be
managed and moved around as cost-effectively as possible.
Herded in our hundreds on and off huge airliners, we sit down
obediently and strap ourselves in for the
long, long haul.
It wasn’t always like this. International air
travel used to be a leisurely
and luxurious affair. Flying was a great adventure
in the early days. The Golden Age of air travel began in 1924,
when the British created an ambitious fleet of aircraft to
serve their far-flung Empire. Imperial Airways served
Europe, Africa, India and Australia until 1939, starting with
a daily London-Paris route which featured a double row of
roomy wicker chairs in the cabin. The airline soon ordered
28 Flying Boats, a chunky amphibious plane with high ceilings,
large reclining seats, wide aisles and an astonishing speed
of 200 miles per hour. It carried 24 passengers by day
and could sleep 16 in berths at night. Ironically British
Airways, successor of Imperial Airways, now offers comfortable
sleeping berths to its first class passengers just as it did
70 years ago.
The trip from London to Sydney was a marathon in those days.
It took almost 11 days to cover what was then the world’s
longest air route of 20,000 miles. The fare of
175 Pounds covered meals, accommodation at hotels when available,
ground transportation and tips. That was a great deal
of money in 1935, when the same journey could be made by sea
in six weeks for a fraction of the cost. The planes
stopped at night for refueling, maintenance, and to allow
the passengers to bathe and rest. It must have been a catering
nightmare to ensure fresh food along the route, which was
mainly desert or tropical. In the early days of commercial
air travel, flying was considered sufficiently
dicey that only registered nurses were permitted to be
stewardesses. At that time, a career as a flight attendant
was considered as glamorous and romantic as air travel
itself.
The Americans entered the international air travel business
in 1939, launching the four-engine Yankee Clipper on the New
York to London route. It carried up to 30 passengers
with sleeping quarters and a honeymoon suite. Travelers
passed the time playing bridge or writing letters at
comfortable tables while waiting for the stewards to serve
a six-course meal. Before this regular flight was offered,
transatlantic flights were unusual and very expensive.
A return ticket from North America to France cost the
modern equivalent of about $7,000.
Today, the long journey happens much too fast. Even
on my first trip to Asia in 1969, it was normal to overnight
in Tokyo and Hong Kong before proceeding to Singapore at a
stately pace, with comfortable hotels provided by the airlines
at each stop. Now we are expected to blast halfway across
the planet in a single day. I land dazed and witless
after being fast-forwarded through 15 time zones at once.
It takes several drug-like sleeps
before the brain, which has spent several days hovering over
Guam, finally reconnects with the body. Only then do
I realize that my feet are cold and there isn’t a palm
tree in sight.
