The first time I flew on a Boeing 747 I was traveling alone to Barbados on business, I wasn’t supposed to be alone I was supposed to be traveling with my host who owned a hotel there but at the last minute he’d upgraded himself to Club Class and forgotten to tell me, which was nice of him, but he was paying so hey-ho. I sat in a window seat with two passengers to my left who spoke no English so you could say it was a quiet flight.
The second time I flew on a Boeing 747 was on the return journey, I was accompanied by an architect who the hotel owner had also brought in for advice and so at least I’d have someone to talk to, the owner took us to the airport and chatted up one of the British Airways check-in girls in his very charming manner – he was the spitting image of Jack Hawkins both in sound and vision – and he managed to get both of us an upgrade.
So the second time I boarded a Boeing 747 it was through the forward door and up the spiral staircase to the upstairs lounge…
But we’ve skipped ahead a little here so lets rewind by six hours.
After he had wangled a free upgrade for the price of a weekend stay at his hotel for the check-in girl and her boyfriend, the hotel owner waved us off and we went through to the departure lounge with an hour to kill before departure. Our monster of an aircraft was standing outside on the tarmac having recently arrived from the UK and seemed to have an awful lot of ground staff gathered around one of the engines.
It wasn’t too long until we found out why.
Let me say here that Bajuns are perhaps one of the worlds friendliest people, nothing is too much for them and they’ll talk the hind leg off a donkey if you even just say “Hello” to them, and the bloke on the airport tannoy was no exception, he had a story to tell about our 747 stood outside and he was going to tell it with none of the corporate hidden meanings that normally accompany air travel announcements, “the plane has a technical issue” was not in his vocabulary.
“Ladies and Gentlemen” he commenced, “Your BA flight tonight will be delayed slightly due to a technical issue with the aircraft.” a perfectly normal airport announcement so far, but he had more specific information to deliver…
“When your aircraft landed here, part of one of the engine cowlings fell off and its damaged the reverse thrust mechanism” he cheerfully continued at which point most of us started to think “Well they’d better send another aircraft out here pronto because I’m not flying on that one tonight”
“But don’t worry Ladies and Gentlemen” he continued, we’ve sent a vehicle out onto the runway to find the broken part and we’ll be working very hard to fix it shortly” and we all looked at each other in horror, they were going to repair one of our engines with a bit that had already broken off it.
Evenings in Barbados tend to rush in very quickly, it gets dark within half an hour and between 6pm and midnight we stood at the window and watched as men in orange boiler suits busied themselves under floodlights around our stricken engine all the while being updated by the man on the tannoy “Good news Ladies and Gentlemen” he informed at one point, “We have found the damaged cowling and we’re bringing it back to the plane right now” and then we watched as a Land Rover pulled up and two men in hi-vis got out with a metal panel which was twisted out of all recognition – a half an hour’s work on it with a sledge hammer got it back into shape though and they kept offering it up to the engine then bashing it a bit more until they were happy that it fitted again, I remember doing the same thing on my first car when I was trying to cover up the rust holes.
Finally, if a little nervously, we boarded and the pair of us were shown to our seats in the upstairs lounge. It wasn’t quite what I had expected for back in the late 1960s when the Boeing 747 was the talk of all the technology and travel TV programmes the likes of Judith Chalmers or William Woollard had been shown to an upstairs lounge that resembled an intimate nightclub, their upstairs lounge in their 747 had a bar with a waiter who looked like he was expecting you, their upstairs lounge had a grand piano with a tuxedo-clad pianist playing Barry Manilow ballads, their 747 upstairs lounge didn’t have regular aircraft seats it had comfortable chaise-langue’s and thickly padded velvet seating around the periphery where you could slouch comfortably whilst holding a turquoise coloured cocktail.
Our 747 upper lounge on the other hand looked just like a much shorter version of the downstairs economy seating area, Roger, my traveling architectural companion (yes, he really was called Roger, a bit posh and ex-public school but a decent chap nonetheless), asked the stewardess if this was Club Class as we’d been sort of promised it would be, “Not quite sir” she replied and regarded us with a slight suspicion as if we ought to appreciate the upper lounge more than we obviously did, “Its not costing you anything at all you ungrateful bastards” was the hidden message in her eyes, and indeed it wasn’t.
The seats were slightly more roomier than economy and to my right between me and the window was a rather large flip-lid locker for storing your cabin baggage, and the stewardess took our jackets and promised to hang them “in the wardrobe”, which was all very nice.
And then just as the aircraft was being pushed back another stewardess appeared at the top of the staircase and asked for the two of us to identify ourselves, “We’ve been rumbled” I thought, “back to economy we go then…” but she approached and asked us to gather our things quickly as she’d found two seats for us in Club Class, this was no more than we deserved of course.
The upper lounge stewardess had to go and collect our jackets from the wardrobe while we gathered up our bags and we were shown downstairs to the ample leg room of Club Class, hurriedly we were sat down, our jackets were hung in a different wardrobe and our new stewardess explained that once we were airborne the line of glass fronted refrigerators across the fron of the cabin that were stocked with soft drinks, chocolate and ice cream would be ours for the free use of, it was BA’s “Raid the fridge” special offer to important Club Class clients like ourselves, I actually asked her to repeat what she’d just said for no-one else in my whole life had ever presented me with several full sized glass fronted fridges and challenged me to eat and drink everything there within, I asked Roger to punch me very hard just to establish if I was actually dreaming this.
And there was more to come, after take-off the stewardess came and presented us with our dining and sleeping essentials, proper silver cutlery, a lovely linen napkin in a tartan pattern which I inexplicably still have to this day, it must have slipped itself into my bag is all I can thing. There was also a pure lambswool tartan blanket, new inside its wrapper for our use through the night, I tried to make that slip accidentally into my bag too but try as it may it couldn’t accidentally make itself look as though it had innocently fallen in there so reluctantly I had to leave it on the plane the next morning.
I determined there and then that the eight hour night flight would not be wasted by such piffling things as sleep and so after our evening meal I ventured forward on my first “Raid the fridge” session, by this time its was around 2am local time and the lights were turned down and most of the passengers snuggled under their lambswool blankets to sleep the flight away, not I for there as still chocolate to consume and a multiple choice of films on the personal TV screen (a novelty in the mid 1990s), I settled back to watch “Silence of the Lambs” with a family sized block of Cadburys Fruit & Nut and two cans of Coca-Cola – thats probably about fifteen minutes worth of refreshments for me.
I don’t think that I’ve enjoyed a flight quite so much although the engine repair delay meant that it was lunchtime by the time we arrived at Gatwick and I then faced a four hour drive back home to Leeds, full of cola and chocolate AND the very nice cooked breakfast that we had been presented with on the flight, fortunately the lack of sleep over the past 36 hours was more than compensated by the huge sugar rush which lasted up the M1 until almost Wakefield at which time the sugar crash was immense and I only just made it home without slipping into a deep sleep.
All in all a fine adventure, and we won the business on the back of the trip, but there has never been a flight quite like that first 747 flight.
Jerrychicken - The Diary 