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London Calling
When the Going Isn’t Good
The only things to be said for air travel is speed.
The huge cloud of poisonous ash, spewed forth from an Icelandic volcano, was a painful reminder of our precarious dependence on air travel. It shut down the airports of northwest Europe for a week and left 20 million people stranded. One of my sons, on vacation with his family in Tuscany, due to fly back direct from that horrible place Pisa Airport, was obliged instead to use six different and desperately crowded railroads, two hotels, and a taxi to get home: for six people over three days it cost him a month’s salary.
Thanks to terrorism, security mania, bad design, and mass tourism, airports are now so un-popular that cruise lines, operating from old-fashioned seaports, make frequent air-free trips their leading advertising appeal. To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell. Not the worst example, though, if you take into account foul, crammed roads from airports to city centers: Lagos in Nigeria and Seoul in Korea take some beating.
The only thing to be said for air travel is speed. It makes possible travel on a scale unimaginable before our present age. Between the ages of 20 and four-score I visited every country in Europe, all save two in Latin America, ditto in Africa, and most of Asia, not counting eight trips to Australia and 60 to the United States — all by air. When I compare my experience with the globe-trotting of Evelyn Waugh in the interwar period, condensed in his volume When the Going Was Good, I realize how lucky I was to see it all so quickly and in comparative comfort.
On the other hand, the going was good then: before airlines imposed monstrous uniformity, travel was enjoyable, full of surprises, a cultural and human education, and slow enough to change your outlook. In the early 4th century BC, Plato, traveling by fast trireme from Athens to Syracuse, found Pythagorean mathematics so absorbing he was away two years and returned a metaphysician. Marco Polo, visiting Asia, spent two decades there, getting about, and on his return was debriefed for a year in a Genoese jail, using the time to write the best book of travel in the entire Middle Ages.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin crossed the Atlantic eight times, a record beaten only by professional mariners and perhaps one or two tobacco merchants. Jetters like, say, Rupert Murdoch or David Frost would think nothing of that, but it took a huge chunk out of Franklin’s life and energy. On the other hand, it made him the most valuable of all human bridges between the New World and the Old. In the age of the coach and horses you were lucky to get one big trip and it changed you. Consider the fuss over Elizabeth Bennet’s journey to the Peak District in Pride and Prejudice, and its effect on her fortunes: it would be small talk today, if that.
The real turning point came when steam downgraded the horse and sail into sport. I often compare the reading matter of Surtees’ celebrated hunting man, Soapey Sponge, who when not riding had his nose deep in the Official List of London Cab-Fares, the only book he ever read, to Sherlock Holmes, at the other end of the 19th century, whose first reaction to a case would be to reach for the latest issue of Bradshaw’s All-Britain Timetable, the detailed guide to what was then the best and most efficient railroad network in the world, to find out how quickly he could get to the scene of the crime.
Rail hugely accelerated but did not dehumanize travel. As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were. Bombay station is perhaps the finest neo-Gothic building in the world. There is in Paris the magnificent Gare de l’Est by François Duquesne, built in 1847-52. Broad Street Station Philadelphia, by the Wilson Brothers (1892-93), is one of a great series of monumental creations in the U.S., terminating in the magnificent Union Station of Cincinnati by Roland Wank (1928). The best thing Mussolini ever did in his unhappy career was to create three monumental stations in Florence, Milan, and Rome (the last finished after World War Two) which, for sheer grandeur and invention, would not have been out of place in the empire of Trajan. It is a significant fact that whereas airports, built by the hundred in the last half-century, belong to the culture of Modernism at its most squalid and brutal, railroad stations can still thrill and excite those who love architecture, as witness the new station at Lyons in France, by the Spanish master Calatrava. It uses ultra-modern materials and construction methods but still contrives to suggest organic beauty. It has been compared to “a giant butterfly enclosing the bones of a dinosaur.”
Artists have, from the start, found railroads a source of fascination. As early as the 1840s, Turner used their atmospherics, as in Rain, Steam, and Speed, to create wondrous color and chiaroscuro effects, and Claude Monet pursued the condensation theme to the end of the century. Terminals were places where the world gathered in sad and joyful congregations ripe for the artist of genre. W. P. Frith used Paddington for his masterpiece The Railway Station (1862) — its amazing arch also produced one of G. K. Chesterton’s best poetic images. The tradition still flourished when Norman Rockwell used the crowds at Chicago Central as one of his best Christmas covers for the Saturday Evening Post. No major artist has ever painted airports.
I thank God that the two places I most care to visit, Paris and Venice (plus Lake Como nearby), I can travel to comfortably by railroad. For the first I use the Channel Tunnel Eurostar — faster than air between the hated Heathrow and the still more detestable Charles de Gaulle — and for the second the revived Orient Express, which recalls the splendors of the interwar train de luxe. Nostalgia for travel three-quarters of a century ago, if you were rich enough to buy first-class tickets, is compelling, especially if the mind dwells on those majestic North Atlantic liners: the Mauretania, the Normandie, the Rex, and the Bremen, later the Queen Mary and the America. Men voyaged in those days with their valets, women with their lady’s maids, the menus and wine lists were books, the ambience a delicate blend of late Henry James and A la recherche du temps perdu.
Is there any possibility of giving international air travel, which we all need and use and hate, a touch of glamour, or even of reliable, soulless efficiency? I suspect future historians will puzzle over our failure. But by then, of course, we shall be in the age of mass space travel, with its fresh and unimaginable crop of horrors.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (39) | Leave a comment
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KyMouse| 6.21.10 @ 7:20AM
Thank you for the fine article, Mr. Johnson. I would go anywhere by train -- and in fact recently drove several hundred miles to catch the Texas Eagle in St. Louis, for a trip down to San Antonio. And I love traveling on the water, which I have done on riverboats and ocean-going cruise ships.
I don't like flying much any more, but I will say that I have seen wonderful things from the air -- a crystal-clear view straight down at Greenland from 36,000 feet, for example; and beautiful lightning in pink clouds at sunset.
Human beings have always wanted to know what it is like to fly. It's too bad that today's human beings often make it unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous.
Appleby| 6.21.10 @ 7:21AM
Airline travel has turned into Greyhound Bus travel, by and large, and it did so when it became cheap enough for the proletariat to afford it. When I started travelling by air (at the age of 11), people dressed up to fly, and flying was rife with amenities from good food to slippers and hot face cloths. Except for the toothpaste-tube-sized Icelandic planes where you brought your own lunch but flew relatively cheaply, planes were comfortable and quiet and mainly frequented by people with manners. These days they are crammed with people in sweatsuits and sneakers, with screaming children and enough carry-ons to fill two first class staterooms, including shopping bags full of food, blankets and games because the airlines charge extra for everything but air.
The sole answer to civilizing air travel again is the same one we made to the repeal of laws allowing apartment buildings to specify Adults Only -- raise the prices so high that the proles cannot afford to travel except to places like Disney World. (This would also do away with the nickel and diming of the travelling public for every amenity). Let them save up for their travel and insist that they dress and behave like civilized people when they board.
Who knows, perhaps this would spill over into everyday life, and the whole world would begin, inch by inch and step by step, to be civilized again.
PolishKnight| 6.21.10 @ 10:00AM
Appleby, I've heard your snobbish opinion before (no insult to snobbery, just an observation) by a stewardess, er, flight attendant complaining on some late night show that since fares went down she saw a decline in manners.
Balderdash. Correlation is not causation!
I remember as a child that riding on the city bus, which was hardly unaffordable for the commoners, was a civilized experience ironically for reasons opposite than you hypothesize: Because the well mannered middle class commonly used them, especially in large cities, they set a standard in manners that others followed.
Today, social class has little to do with manners or style of dress. Middle class teens are covered with face piercings and tattoos and pay $50 for jeans that look like they've been through the washer a thousand times. Culturally, society has changed and we all know the (very unPC) reasons. Well, some of us do.
Occam's Tool| 6.21.10 @ 12:57PM
Sorry---most of the annoyance of plane travel is due to the actions of ultra-rich Islamists. Find me a person without financial backing who has been an airline terrorist. I'll wait.
Occam's Tool| 6.21.10 @ 12:59PM
Those "kids" you so despise, Appleby, are the ones who will be paying for your medicare and defendinhg our country when you are too old to do so. A country that hates children is doomed to death.
PolishKnight| 6.21.10 @ 3:24PM
I find the children-as-ponzi-pyramid-scheme supporters argument to be amusing. Love the kids because they'll be exploited someday like the rest of us.
Gee, with elders like that, isn't it amazing that children get a rebellious streak in 'em?
A country that exploits it's children is doomed to death.
D.Jones| 6.22.10 @ 3:02AM
Agree with Appleby. Where is Herod when you need him?
RCV| 6.22.10 @ 12:04AM
This post is enough to make one nostalgic for the guillotine.
Misanthrope| 6.21.10 @ 7:21AM
A good way to start would be to do away with TSA and put some smart people in charge of airport security, like the Israelis. Being virtually strip searched by big sis, sort of ruins the whole trip nowadays.
potkas7| 6.21.10 @ 7:27AM
When people look to travel by air they are concerned about only one thing: price. Couple that with the government ownership of airports and terminals and you get a soul-less, Hobbesian conformity. But it was not always thus. The old TWA terminal at JFK or the old terminal at LAX are noteworthy designs. And for glamour and romance you can't beat Pan American's Flying Boat terminal at Dinner Key, now doing duty as Miami's City Hall. Looking around what is now a marina you can hear the ghosts of the famous PanAm Clippers echoing from the old hangars now used for boat storage.
Bram| 6.21.10 @ 9:37AM
Speed / direct routes are a second consideration - just to minimize the pain.
I have also found myself willing to pay slightly more and take more time to get flights out of smaller airports like Allentown, Hartford, and Wilkes-Barre - and into Tuscon, Burbank, or Fort Myers just to avoid the madness of Newark , JFK, and LAX.
Unger| 6.21.10 @ 7:28AM
It seems to me that a six month journey from Earth to Mars might be an excellent time to study Pythagorean mathematics. Some future space farer inspired by the majesty and deep solitude of interplanetary space might even become a metaphysician.
Denver Todd| 6.21.10 @ 8:11AM
Price is the most important factor of air travel simpy because the internet made everyone into their own travel agent. The airlines did away with commissions and in their place gave birth to a wholly new monster. There is an antidote to this madness, though. I propose that we shut down the intenet!
Melvin| 6.21.10 @ 8:28AM
Someone asked me some time back, "What is the worst invention that man has ever invented?" I replied, "The Cell phone."
For a moment there I thought I was going to be summarily executed.
PolishKnight| 6.21.10 @ 10:18AM
Melvin, I won't execute you but I will argue that you're being simple minded.
Certainly, it's annoying when people abuse cell phones such as yakking loudly on them in restaurants or otherwise peaceful trains but apart from such abuses, they're a godsend to a lot of people.
One of the "back in the old days" observations I like to make is when in movies they show people going to phone booths. They appear romantic... in the movies, but us gumshoes know better. Old style phone booths were often smelly and used by the homeless, the phones were cheap and dirty, and if you didn't have the correct change, you were out of luck.
Stay at a hotel? Expect to be reamed by the hotel phone charge fees. Now with mobile phones, I tell them to not even bother turning it on. My address book is in my phone allowing me to not worry about losing a number.
OK, so what is the worst invention man has created? I don't know for sure, but candidates include: speed bumps, leaf blowers, red light and speed cameras, and of course, cigarettes.
Melvin| 6.21.10 @ 11:53AM
Nah, I know that, the reason I made that comment was life was easier before the advent of the cell phone. From a technological point of view, and the cell phone was the tip of the spear so to speak for the techno revolution.
Everything today is mass, mass, mass. Mass travel, mass produced, mass whatever.
Faster, and faster isn't necessarily better.
Occam's Tool| 6.21.10 @ 1:00PM
I hate my cell phone. Nonetheless, as an MD, having one has allowed me to move more freely when on call.
PolishKnight| 6.21.10 @ 3:38PM
That's not true, Melvin.
Nothing is stopping you from spending the money for a private yacht or jet if you dislike mass sea and air travel, for instance.
Back to the mobile phone: It may appear to be the tip of the spear for mobile communications, but that was said of the telephone itself which was accused of killing letter writing.
Personally, I think the younger generation's addiction to texting is just a fad similar to the CB radios 30 years ago. Remember that? They want a toy to impress each other. That's all.
Melvin| 6.21.10 @ 8:26AM
I have never done this and one day I hope to. Traveling on an ocean liner, not the Carnival types, but a ocean liner of many years back crossing the Atlantic in the Winter sitting outside on the promenade deck reading a book, bundled up against the cold Atlantic Sea.
Plus, this type of traveling is good for having stimulating conversation with ones fellow travelers. Hell, ya get on a aircraft now and the person next to doesn't even act like you exist.
Bram| 6.21.10 @ 3:29PM
I will never have the time before retirement but I would like to do one of these also.
http://www.freightercruises.com/
JohnD| 6.21.10 @ 8:42AM
Now that flying is as pleasant as being arrested. I do not fly anymore. I hope all the airlines go bankrupt, and cease to exist. I prefer train and ocean travel.
I would also like to see someone revisit zeppelins/airships. They were comfortable and traveling on them was civilized and pleasant. It took about 2.5 days to cross the Atlantic on them.
LiveFreeOrDie| 6.21.10 @ 3:21PM
I've not flown 3-4 times in the last year simply because I didn't want to deal with the 'security'
First time my then 12-year-old daughter was pat down by a scummy 'agent' was the last time.
John Navratil| 6.21.10 @ 9:10PM
Travel is work. It comes from the Middle English to torment or to labor. If you wish to go distances without the pain of the TSA consider private flight. There is absolutely no economic justification for it - Southwest can always beat the price - but the view of the world is magnificent.
Until the government shuts it down - they are trying - it does return the adventure and joy to the process.
N. Coward| 6.21.10 @ 10:57AM
Why Do The Wrong People Travel? I suppose everyone has a horrible flight story. Julia Sugarbaker once said "With my luck my seat will be next to a baby who smokes."
Melvin| 6.21.10 @ 11:58AM
Or a baby who craps his diapers or try this for size, 20 of the little buggers in a small cramped aircraft cabin from parents who recently adopted them.
This was on a return flight from overseas two years ago. There is nothing like the recycled odor of baby crap on a aircraft.
Occam's Tool| 6.21.10 @ 1:02PM
Melvin, who will pay for the taxes to hire people to wipe your malodorous behind when you're too old to do it yourself? Answer: those kids you despise. I've adopted 2 kids from overseas, and believe me, you smell worse.
Ed| 6.21.10 @ 12:22PM
A year ago, we took a round trip cruise between Baltimore and Bermuda. We drove from Ohio to Baltimore, and made a side trip to Williamsburg, VA. Cruising is better than First-Class air travel, with much better food, and room to walk around in. All in all, the only thing you can say about modern air travel is that is fast.
However, cruise ships have TSA-style security lines on embarkation, although Bermuda's security checkpoints were fast and efficient. Cruise lines want to make absolutely sure that only passengers and crew are on board, and they swipe your passenger ID card (with your digital photo embedded in it) every time you get back on the ship.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.21.10 @ 1:08PM
Paul,
4 score yers........
You are OLD like me. DON'T GO ANYMORE AND QUIT BITCHING!
hEH!
Sheila| 6.21.10 @ 1:30PM
I sympathize with Appleby's complaint but must agree with PolishKnight - the problem is the general degradation of manners and lack of social decorum in general. As a a society, we are degenerating as we are being replaced. Occam'sTool, personal experience does not good public policy make. You chose foreign adoption - this does not make you nobler (or any more or less foul smelling than others) so keep your multiculturalism and rabid egalitarianism to yourself. Decline and fall.
Lawrence Cannon| 6.21.10 @ 2:12PM
My brother is an employee with a major airline. His family gets free space-available travel. On my first trip like this, I thought I heard him say that to travel space-available, you had to wear a coat and tie. Anyway, I went on the trip fully decked, and I was treated very well. Not only that, but an old friend of my brother's (who used to travel extensively in the 1930's and 1940's) thought I was classy to have traveled like that. Turns out, I was only supposed to wear long jeans or slacks with a buttoned shirt, but the reaction has always stuck with me.
Since then, I make it a point to dress the best I can for a plane flight. Everybody treats you better than if you go wearing cutoff jeans and flipflops. When I take my family on plane trips, I insist THEY dress up as well.
daddy| 6.21.10 @ 5:58PM
According to Historian David Hackett Fischer, Champlain crossed the Atlantic 27 times between the mid 1590's to mid 1630's.
John II| 6.21.10 @ 9:29PM
Air travel will become humane (again) when some form of propulsion other than belligerent jet engines propel the craft. The zeppelin airships mimicked the ocean liners charmingly; seems as if we could bring them back en masse while waiting for the technology (involving some subtle, less sputtering anti-gravity procedure) that will humanize air travel inexpensively.
Of course, in the meantime, we'll have to cancel Original Sin, since the West no longer seems to have the cajones to kill off a few hundred thousand terrorists and thus permanently put the fear of God in their 250 million supporters in the wonderful world of Islam--until even the Muslims all say, "Screw it--I like safe air travel too, without all that security stuff."
As John Wayne said in some of his more important flicks: "That'll be the day."
ABNCP| 6.21.10 @ 9:44PM
When I was a younger man (early 1960's) I worked for Air France at LAX we had two fllights a week inbound and two outbound to Paris. Once or twice a month one of those flights was called the Golden Chateaux flight. It was a 707 but with many elite benes over the normal flights to Paris. They had a special chef for the flight. The food and drink was top of the line French quality. The seating was less than half of what a normal 707 could take. In a word outstanding. Those days are gone forever, but it was a trip to remember.
frequent flyer| 6.21.10 @ 11:47PM
Our own ugly American flyers are jarring enough to the sensibilities, but observing "other cultures" or trying not to, is worse.
A sari-wrapped woman and her three year old were across the aisle from me. She was nursing (looked to be) 3 year old child, the entire fllight - or at least readily available to him. She arranged herself, head lolled over the armrest bobbing out in aisle -slouched sideways in her seat, invading the space of the middle passenger next to her. And she goes to sleep. Kid nurses a bit, plays a bit, nurses some more - mama still snoozing away.
I am envisioning a headline: "Bare- breasted Bangladeshi Beheaded By Beverage Cart"
Or, get yourself seated in the same plane with someone who had kimchee(sp?) for breakfast - probably breakfast, lunch and dinner for the past 15 years. It oozes from every pore.
frequent flyer| 6.22.10 @ 12:34AM
Sounds like Paul longs for flying as it was before deregulation.
Those were the days - when United referred to Hawaii as "Our Little Corner of the World" and Pan Am - - well, it used to refer to itself as Pan Am until it was no more. . .
Paul laments the cash outlay of his stranded son - brought on by another natural disaster, but one wonders, if we had two classes of planes - not seat selection, but entire planes - one, first class from cockpit to tail section and the other we will call the "Riff Raff Ride" no frills, no pretzels, no nothin' - - would he pony up for the first class one?
Everything that has a cost, has a price.