JET Research Bureau – Note #232

I needed information on air travel back and forth between Philadelphia and London in 1961 for a novel I was working on. Some sources suggested Pan Am flew non-stop on this route back then, but details on  this were hard to find. However, I determined that British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flew regularly from New York to London back then, which would be an easy connection from Philadelphia. I needed enough detail on this to be sure I didn’t have any howlers in the story.

Details, I found.

The source I came across was a website, Timetableimages.com, run by two gentleman,  Björn Larsson and David Zekria. Here they are:

I wanted hard data, like departure times and flight durations. I was fortunate enough to find a timetable on their site for the period I was researching (1961). This is what the front of the timetable looks like:

And here is part of the inside of the timetable:

The flight durations look a lot like what they are now. In terms of factual research, my work was pretty much done.

But since when are facts the interesting things? For example, who knew that Terry Jones of Monty Python fame (or maybe his mother (or father)), was a model for BOAC?

 

Obviously, they changed the name to Smith to preserve her (his) anonymity.

The timetable also reveals that air travel was much more civilized in those days of course:

Free Transport from the town terminal (whatever that is) – except for all sort of locations, including “Australian Points”.

No need to tip the stewardess . . . and of course, you could not only smoke, but buy your ciggies mid-air, not matter what your class was.

Going further afield (as happens when you go down a rabbit hole like this), we find a hopeful pitch from Pan Am in a 1945 brochure.

Businessmen in post-ward Europe looking for drugs and serums . . . just make sure it’s not Harry Lime!

With the picture below, I had to think twice about the “without tipping” guarantee, which seemed it might refer to the airplane not keeling over in the sea:

And then there are . . . luggage tags:

 From the collections of Jacques Robert d’Eshougues and Daniel Kusrow

Which are things of beauty . . . but that’s another “trainspotter-ish” story.

Robert Louis Stevenson said he could create an epic from a newspaper if he knew what to leave out. I am sure there are thousands of stories buried within Messrs. Larsson and Zekia’s site, but I would rather all the artistes leave it alone for the treasure trove that it is.

 

Note: All images are from www.timetableimages.com, retrieved October 2, 2016; and are from the collection of Björn Larsson, unless otherwise noted.