No Orchids
By PROFESSOR D. W. BROGAN
HAT has been for years a subject of bitter controversy among the leaders of the international air-lines has, apparently, been settled. The air-lines are going to compete in cheapness instead of in " service." One theory of what the " cochon de payant" wants has triumphed over another. It was about time, for I have never met any passenger who wanted from the air-lines all the luxuries of a first-class flying carpet. But the air-lines thought- differently, and had a vision of the ideal passenger that was, I think, far from the truth.
Does he, and still more does she, want service (with a smile), orchids, beauty aids, overnight bags, champagne suppers, or are the souls of passengers so dead that they would prefer facilities more iminediately associated with the aim of air-travel—getting to a place quickly ? There are signs that the air-moguls now understand that most passengers, even the lady who likes free perfume, even the man who likes free gin, would prefer equal or greater speed and, even more, lower fares. To amend the celebrated and apocryphal maxim of General Forrest, they want to get there " fustest at lowest."
That this simple truth should still, to judge by air-line publicity, be in dispute illustrates the fairyland character of a good deal of air-travel. It is still thought of as a luxury ; its passengers falling into two groups, the rich to whom money is no object, the beneficiaries of expense accounts to whom it is less than no object. But more and more people without much money fly because they have to, and they have-to pay their own fares. I am speaking for what is now a majority of users of the air when I assert firmly that we want speed, safety and cheapness. The order may vary from time to time, but these are the-three primal goods. And, again, the passenger has an uneasy keling that these are not the primary aims of all the air-lines.
Speed perhaps is. True, air-travel is often very slow. I have spent four days going to New York (in two planes), and there is Some truth in the old gibe, `,` In a hurry, go by train." But, despite infuriating delays, on the whole the air-lines do save time. Few would use them if they didn't, and most of us are relieved that speed is not given a complete primacy over safety. (An unkind American has been reproaching aeronautic engineers with a brisk indifference to safety factors, and we shall fly sitting the wrong way round for years yet.) But safety is looked after reasonably well, although flying will remain more dangerous than travel by rail or road (I know the statistics that prove the contrary ;.I don't believe them).
But just as the air-lines are unduly coy about the risks to life involved in flying, they are also coy about its other drawbacks. I have flown on all important European air-lines and on most American air-lines. And all the efforts to make you feel that you are at home, not in the air, are lost on me. There was that snug, dimity-curtained, sporting-print-adorned bar on a B.O.A.C. plane, a miniature of a " snug " in brewer's Georgian, but ,I, for one, did not forget that 20,000 feet below was the arctic ice-pack —and very hummocky it looked.
I gaze with incredulity at the advertising showing sumptuous meals served in the most ritzy styles. I have never had a good meal on a plane yet and don't expect to. In fact I don't expect a meal. On a short journey (London to Paris) you don't need it. On a long one, a snack at a lunch-counter in Detroit or Omaha or Schiepol- is usually better. And at night you should be left alone, not turned out of your expensive berth at 2 a.m. to get ham and eggs in Iceland. Stay where you are. It is possible to fly from Philadelphia to San Francisco without leaving your seat. I have done it. ' You will be bored, but you needn't be desperately hungry. Flying' is an uncomfortable way of travelling, and the new stratocruisers are less comfortable than the old flying boats. But they are quicker, and that is what we want.
But over all sides of the business hangs an air of unreality. At the Victoria terminal of B.O.A.C. there used to- be no left- luggage office, so that, in the not unusual event of your plane not flying, you had to haul your luggage down to old-fashioned Victoria railway-station. That has now been remedied, and B.O.A.C. is as-good as any of its competitors and better than most. The B.E.A. terminal at South Kensington is badly sited, inadequate in size and not well-planned ; which is all the worse as passengers may be coming from the best -terminal I know, the Paris aerogare, while at Victoria they may be coming from the worst in the world, which is in New York. On the other hand, London Airport may, some day; be one of the-wonders of the world, but, as it accretes one shed to another, it recalls Marvell's poem about the Vegetable loves . . . [which] grow Vaster than empires and more slow. And no line has learned to handle passengers, luggage and their troubles as well as the Cunard or the French lines, though, again, I am glad to give a " plug " to the B.O.A.C. They are learning fast.
It may well be that the cocktails and the compacts cost only a trifle. (The famous overnight bags need cost little ; on sixteen transatlantic flights I have managed to collect one, and that had to be asked for.) But they suggest, to the possibly unduly suspicious passenger, that the needs of what in America is called the day coach" traveller are being neglected. If I want to travel for comfort or even for pleasure, I go to Paris by the Golden Arrow and to New York by sea. No, the motto of the air-lines should be adapted from that of the R.A.F. Per ardua to our destinations, quickly, safely and cheaply.
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