High life
Flight maiden
Taki
TNew York he very first time I flew from the Big Olive to the Big Bagel was in 1948 and I was 11 years old. The trip took the better part of two days, with stops in Rome, Paris, London, Shannon, Gander and Bos- ton. We flew on a TWA Constellation, a four-engine propeller aircraft that cruised at 280 mph and provided sleepers for first-class passengers.
Back then the company was owned by Howard Hughes, and he had not as yet gone potty. Being a hell of a pilot, he used to test all his aeroplanes as well as his pilots (also the stewardesses). What I remember most about the trip was — yes, you guessed it — the hostess, and how beautiful and graceful she was.
Needless to say, those were the good old days. The white hats were winning the war in Greece and the hated Yankees had lost the World Series in America (to the Cleveland Indians, of all teams). I had not as yet discovered girls, so nothing much else mattered except wars and sport, my father's favourite topics when addressing his children. But that stewardess disturbed me throughout the trip, although I didn't know why at the time.
I thought about my very first flight as I flew Concorde from London to New York for a quick business trip to the nation's capital. There is a direct flight from the Olive to the Bagel but it takes ten hours, and nowadays I am so spoiled I couldn't spend ten hours in an aeroplane even if a time machine took me back to 1948 and that beautiful hostess who bewitched me when I was 11.
Mind you, three hours on Concorde is the equivalent of two days in a prop plane. It all has to do with quality. Not having flown the fast bird in almost six years, I had forgotten just how awful the people who fly Concorde really are. They are all on expense accounts: fat, arrogant, ugly, overdressed, balding and to a man reading balance sheets and position reports. No one says hello, but everyone gives orders. The man sitting next to me was the worst. He collapsed rather than sat on his chair, pushed my arm off the middle arm-rest, and then opened up the Independent, covering my poor little Spectator as well as my tray.
Now you might suspect I am exaggerat- ing, but what I am about to tell you is the truth and nothing but. I was on seat 18C. In front of me, on row 17, were two men. One was reading the Guardian, the other The Spectator. The Guardian reader did exactly the same thing to the Speccy reader as that arrogant buffoon did to me: spread himself and his rag all over him. In my case, not for long. There was one empty seat on the aircraft, and the man next to me soon chose to move to it. The trick is in the elbow. Every time he put it on the middle arm-rest, I shoved mine as close to his ribs as possible, while looking him straight in the eye with a 'what are you going to do about it?' expression. Try it and see. It always works unless one gets a maniac for a seatmate. Which is what he thought I was, and moved.
But why am I surprised at the calibre of people travelling Concorde? The last time I had flown on it I sat next to Emma Soames — who fortunately had a freebie for business reasons — and the next nicest man on board, we decided, was John DeLorean, who was sitting behind us. A week later he got busted on a coke charge.
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