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.