The beginning of the end?

(This is the third and last part of a look back at the beginnings of the airline age. You should read ‘Whatever happened to “the passenger’s always right”?’ and ‘ Ships out! Planes in’ first)

I believe the rot set in with the introduction of jet airliners beginning with the British built Comet and the American Boeing 707 in the mid 1950’s. This opened the door to mass air travel at much less cost and taking up much less time.

In the 1960’s we had inexpensive holiday packages to Spain and other Mediterranean hotspots. Suddenly, anybody with a week’s holiday and £ 25 to spare could jet off to the sun.

The 1970’s saw an explosion in international air travel brought about by the introduction of wide bodied airliners and a proliferation of airlines as each nation set up its own flag carrier.

As seat availability increased and fuel oil remained cheap then fares came down and the whole thing became exponential. Cheaper fares created a greater demand for seats. The greater the demand for seats, the less comfort for passengers as the airlines strove to pack as many as they could into their aircraft.

The latest chapter in the saga unfolded in the late 1990’s with the introduction of low cost/no frills airlines.

A journey in an aeroplane today has become (arguably) one of the most awful experiences that one might experience in a lifetime. The whole experience from beginning to end has become a nightmare.

Passengers passing through airports are routinely belittled, humiliated and degraded by airport security staff with little or no conception of customer relations or service who are responding, doglike to government induced terrorism paranoia .

London Heathrow security queue

Airline personnel, both on the ground and in the air, can be very rude and appear disillusioned, lacking in motivation having abandoned all pretence of enjoying their work whilst they are managed by people more interested in the bottom line of a spreadsheet than in creating and perpetuating a viable service industry with satisfied customers at the receiving end.

Increasing instances of operational delays and management foul-ups lead to rising levels of passenger frustration and fury before and during a flight.

Once in the air the environment for most passengers, trapped for many hours at a time in seats with minimum width and legroom, is not only extremely uncomfortable but downright unhealthy.

The latest we hear is that some airlines wish to sanction the use of mobile phones in flight. That, for many of us, will be the last straw.

Bigger aircraft, more flights, more passengers. The whole concept of air travel in its present form has finally spiralled to the bottom of the swamp and all the shiny new terminals and additional runways in the world will never resurrect it. The recent debacle at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 is stark testament to that.

As passengers there is little we can do to help ourselves since there are few viable alternatives to air travel and the airlines and the airport operators know that and shamelessly exploit it.

Until now, that is. With a world financial crisis looming, a sharp reduction in the availability of credit and disposable income and the soaring cost of fuel, the airlines are going to be experiencing some very lean times and sooner than they might believe.

I believe that, just as the shipping companies had to rethink, redesign and repackage their product back in the late 60’s, the air transport industry as a whole needs a radical reappraisal – airlines, airport operators and aircraft designers alike. It needs people in all levels of management who have actually worked on the front line, facing fare–paying passengers who have every right to expect a better deal for their money.

Never will there be a better time for the industry to step back, regroup and re-organise ready to start again for the benefit of all when the financial climate has recovered.

It’s time, once again, for the passenger to be ‘always right’

Ships out! Planes in.

(You should read ‘Whatever happened to ‘the passenger’s always right’ first)

In the early days there was a glamour and excitement about flying. You could join 23 other passengers aboard one of the big Imperial Airways flying boats on a week long journey from Johannesburg to Southampton – flying low level over the African plains, looking down on grazing herds of wild animals, landing on lakes and rivers and staying in hotels and guest houses each night.

In the 1950’s 60 passengers could cross the Atlantic in a Pan Am or BOAC double decked Stratocruiser, savouring the comfort of lounge chairs or sleeping berths with a downstairs lounge and bar in which to while away the time.

From this ……. Stratocruiser cabin

Trawl through the photo archives on the Internet and you will find hundreds of pictures of smiling and relaxed passengers, many of them well known movie stars and celebrities, enjoying a flight or waving happily as they disembarked.

Because the fares paid by airline passengers in those days were a great deal more than those who chose to travel by sea, everyone was treated with great respect – everyone flew First Class.

At the end of the 1960’s two things happened that were to have a profound effect on the passenger shipping companies.

The first was that the immigration schemes sponsored by the Australian and New Zealand governments came to an end. The second was the introduction of the Boeing 747 in 1968.

I worked in the ships of the Orient Line between 1960 and 1970. My uncle, who had immigrated to Australia in 1947, worked for QANTAS – the Australian international airline. On one of my visits to Sydney in 1962 he invited me to see where he worked at Mascot Aerodrome. During the visit he proudly took me on board one of the airline’s new Boeing 707’s. The aircraft carried about 100 Tourist Class passengers in rows of 3 seats each side of a central aisle. Up front there were 12 or so First Class seats in 2-2 configuration. “Sydney to London in 22 hours with just 2 stops – it’s the future”, my uncle enthused.

I remember standing in the middle of the Tourist Class cabin, looking around and asking myself ‘who in their right mind would sit, cooped up like this for 22 hours?’

7 years later I had my answer. A 28,000 ton passenger ship carried 1,200 passengers and 600 crew. As the popularity of flying grew the shipping companies found themselves in the situation where ships were sailing on scheduled voyages with fewer passengers than crew.

There was some salvation on the horizon in the increasing popularity of holiday cruising but ships designed for multi-class line voyaging could not easily be adapted to cruise passengers needs. New ships specially designed for cruising and a complete re-think on operating procedures was needed and needed fast.

The Boeing 747 was the final straw. It could carry 200+ passengers and whilst it was still many hours of discomfort to get from A to B, airline fares were becoming cheaper by the day and the saving in travel time was so significant that people were prepared to ‘suffer’ the discomfort in order to get to where they wanted to be quickly.

to this ……. (in just 18 years) B747 cabin

It was the end for the passenger liners. I resigned in 1970 and within a few short years line voyaging had ceased altogether. The combined Orient/P & O fleet, 23 big ships in it’s hey day, was reduced to 2 – ‘Oriana’ and ‘Canberra’. Both survived because they were the latest additions to the fleet and both had been designed, fortuitously, with the option of cruising in mind.

Over the years since, holiday cruising has gained in popularity and companies like Carnival, Royal Caribbean and a resurgent P & O continue to build bigger and more luxurious ships.

Today the world’s combined passenger fleet is bigger than it has ever been in history.

Whatever happened to ‘the passenger’s always right’?

Until 1969 almost the only way to travel internationally was by passenger ship. True, air travel was available but it was expensive and used only by the very rich and those who needed to be somewhere in a hurry.

British, European and American shipping companies proliferated. A typical voyage from London to Sydney via the Suez Canal took 6 weeks. From 1960 onwards the Orient Line flagship ‘Oriana’ with her operating speed of 27 knots cut the voyage from Southampton to Fremantle to 21 days.

If you took the ‘Oriana’ from Naples to Fremantle, travelling to Naples and on to your eventual destination from Fremantle by rail or by air it was possible to complete a journey from London to a major city in Australia or New Zealand in 16 – 17 days.

The passenger base was mainly the immigrant trade to Australia and New Zealand with young Australians and New Zealanders on working holidays to Britain and Europe filling the berths on the return voyage. Other passengers included tea and rubber planters and their families on leave from India and the Far East, businessmen, civil servants, embassy and military personnel and some tourists. The England and Australian touring cricket teams were regular passengers as well as a sprinkling of aspiring pop stars, actors and sundry VIP’s.

A popular way for Australians to tour Europe was to travel by ship to Naples then overland visiting a number of European countries on a ‘whistle stop’ coach tour that finished in London 3 weeks later, just in time to rejoin their ship for the return voyage after her 2 week UK turn-around. That ‘trip of a lifetime’ could take 3 months to complete.

The Orient liners (t-b) Orontes, Oronsay and Orcades at Piermont, Sydney c. 1960

Americans toured in a similar way, using the fast trans-Atlantic liners to reach Europe. These tours were very popular and provided the storyline for the 1969 Hollywood movie – “If it’s Tuesday – then it must be Belgium”.

In the mid 1960’s the tourist trade expanded and ships began taking Australian and New Zealand passengers across the Pacific Ocean to Canada, the west coast of the USA and Acapulco calling in at Fiji and Hawaii on the way. An alternative route was north to Japan through French Caledonia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Occasionally a round-the-world voyage would be completed with a transit through the Panama Canal and a trans-Atlantic crossing.

Passengers, even those on £ 10 immigrant tickets, slept on comfortable beds in private cabins, could take a bath or shower whenever they wanted, enjoyed 3 good meals a day and had the opportunity to visit ashore in ports of call along the way. A full program of entertainment was provided including the latest movies and passengers had the use of various public rooms, a library, open decks and a swimming pool for recreation and relaxation.

The only occasional discomfort might be a rough transit through the Bay of Biscay or the Great Australian Bight and mid-summer passages through the Red Sea particularly on the older, non air-conditioned ships.

One mantra was drilled into all ‘passenger facing’ crew in the liners of the past – ‘the passenger’s ALWAYS right’ and even though they might not have been, you made damn sure that they thought they were.

That mantra was picked up and used for a song in Noel Coward’s 1961 Broadway musical ‘Sail Away’.

The service and hospitality, the comfort and facilities that ships passengers were used to then has, I’m sure, transcended to the huge holiday cruise ships of today.

Today’s airline passengers however – even those traveling First or Business Class – experience nowhere near the comfort and relaxation that an immigrant passenger enjoyed in a liner all those years ago.

The majority of airline staff strive to be courteous and accommodating and some airlines are much better at doing it than others. But when you are surrounded by 200-300 Economy Class passengers all tired, irritable, uncomfortable, cramped, sweaty, smelly and quite unable to do anything about those conditions for 11 hours or so on a long-haul flight then you can be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to ‘the passenger’s always right’.

Hullo!

So, I’ve started a blog. I never though I would. But as I get older and I have more time to sit back and view what goes on in the world from a distance then I find myself more inclined to voice an opinion or a make a suggestion or simply comment on something that’s happened.

Maybe it’s advancing old age and senility – who knows?

Over the last couple of years I’ve posted on Internet forums and in the ‘what’s your view’ columns of various on-line newspapers. The problem with such forums is that your carefully crafted piece disappears within a day or so – never to re-appear again. Also, it rarely gets read properly – readers tend to cherry pick the bits they like or (more often) dislike and concentrate their responses on that rather than what you are trying to say as a whole.

A blog, as I see it, opens up one’s thoughts and feelings to a much more diverse group of readers and it stays visible for as long as the author wants.

As you will see from my profile, the first ten years of my working life were spent ‘customer facing’ as an officer on the big passenger ships of the Orient Line sailing from the UK to ports around the world. With that as my background and now with several hundred thousand air-miles under my belt, my current focus of attention is on the airline industry and what passengers get for their money so there will be an item or three on that thorny subject for sure.

I have many other concerns and opinions and many of them will surface at some time or other.

I have lived in many places in the world and I have met and lived amongst a lot of interesting people.

I have done things in my life that many people would dearly love to do themselves but whose life circumstances have denied them the opportunity.

It’s a lifetime of memories and experience that I want to share along with occasional ‘pearls’ of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it.