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According to Ford, the first regular passenger service was all the way back in 1919 – a short hop across Tampa Bay between the Florida cities of St Petersburg and Tampa. In the early 1920s, you could fly from London to Paris. By 1929, following the launch of Imperial Airways in 1924, passengers were fanning out across the British Empire, the numbers growing rapidly until, by the late 1930s, there were about 50,000 a year taking to the skies.
During this era, newspapers, magazines and the cinema
were filled with glamorous stories and exciting footage of international flight. The fictional pilot Biggles, whose first novel by Capt WE Johns appeared in 1932, was a key figure in romanticising flight, as was Sir Alan Cobham, whose touring air shows and joyrides had attracted three million spectators and almost a million paying passengers by the end of the 1930s. At around the same time, the British government was funding new flying clubs and subsidising the cost of lessons. Even so, it wasn’t until well after the World War II that international air travel became a truly commercial form of transport. “Aviation now exerted a powerful pull on the popular imagination,” Ford
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explains, “drawing on a mixture of Blitz-forged resilience, the prevailing plucky underdog narrative of the Battle of Britain and confi dence in a new jet-powered future.” Throughout the 1950s, the British state airline BOAC off ered passenger jet services in Africa, Asia and across the Atlantic. Footage of the Royal Family and various stars of film and music on board added to the appeal of this new jet set.
In the 1960s and 70s, air travel opened up to the masses as charter flights were integrated into package holidays, and jumbo jets reduced ticket prices. Ford says that between 1968 and 1978 world passenger numbers increased sixfold. “Flight was being reconceptualised as an aspirational part of modern life,” Ford says. Forty years on, with international flight now dominated by budget airlines, it’s difficult to imagine the magic and charm of that jet age. “Although the likes of Easyjet and Ryanair have helped us to become global citizens, they are no frills,” she admits. “Flying has become humdrum.” Still, there’s a promise of more glamour beyond the horizon, she says. “That’s in space tourism.” BT
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