You must have loved breathing in all that cigarette smoke!

@@beijingpete It was part of our job. Smoking was widespread especially in Asia and Europe. I survived but some of my colleagues didn't or developed some tragic ailments. So much has changed and getting older isn't just wrinkles, grey hair, and sometimes a cranky attitude. I didn't make fun of how someone prepared for their trip. I'm genuinely saddened by how many formerly vital, active and fit individuals now look like Simon and Garfunkel......

Congrats

It was of it’s time..as were attitudes, manners and respect….not a perfect decade for sure…..but compared to these times…..where is that Time Machine…..

You're still flying at what over 60????

Cool! I was in Accra in 1962 and remember going home on a jet taking 6 hours instead of 9! From 1967 to 1977 I did 6 flights a year on these beauties. Loved them!

Colin I never landed at the old airport in Lusaka but like you, enjoyed flying on the VC10 to and from Accra, Freetown and Lusaka for my school holidays. THE BEST PLANE EVER!

I lived there 1960-1973 also……my mum was station manager for BUA and BCAL, my uncle was a captain…..I flew via Entebbe to Gatwick 6 times a year on them……all the way in the jump seat if my uncle was flying……I later became a navigation officer for BA and Etihad for 15 years until 2017

Unlikely the flight went via Guam more like Fiji. Unlikely the flight took 36 hours either. Unlikely you ate continuously either.

@@Ben-xe8ps 36 hours from New York to Sydney, stopping in LA, Honolulu, Fiji, then Sydney. 36 hours with layovers. 1970.

MrGchiasson indeed what happened ?

People were still dressing up to fly, even on a flight to a holiday in Spain in the 1970s. Only rich people flew anywhere up to the 1980s and even then it was all that cheap. BOAC cheerfully fleeced the flying public, make no mistake about that.

Just, before my time. I was born in 1970 & my father in 1947. I grew up being close to 3 of my grandparents who had always worked, 1 had been a soldier in Africa, & a grandmother who worked in a Birmingham munitions factory in World War 2. I grew up with standards, a sense of decorum, & how to dress & behave appropriately. The young ones do not know they are born. They are not loyal in the way that we, who were close to grandparents who survived, can ever be. Too much, "me me" culture now.

''.And people knew how to behave like mature adults...'' yes, with a grown up cigarette in one hand and a whiskey in the other.

''Like mature adults" that's so true. Many adults are hardly distinguishable from their own kids given their behavior nowadays :S

I flew the same route

Yes OF COURSE you were able to go First Class. Of course. Every teenager flew First Class when their mum sent them home.

Sick and tired of your kind of: "omg no smoking please" complainers🤮 As if there are no other things to worry about.

Smoking is a must 😂

The VC-10 was designed with minimal airfield in mind.

Eg Quito, with takeoff before dawn to counter altitude (248Om) and heat,on the BOAC Trinidad-Bogota- Quito- Lima run in the mid- 60s..

PS anyone know any more exoerience s of that route? Also took in a view of the Angel Falls,Venezuela,I heard.

I have been on a flight that had them, but I can't remember which airline.

My recent flight on Malaysia Airlines had tray tables of that design.

@@jonathantan2469 No one cares

Not particularly unusual

Rhys Hogan in your dreams. Food is shit in any class.

Moron, no one can afford that.

Sure, but...money, margin and shareholders dictate absolutely everything nowadays. Most of legacy carriers don't have much difference with RyanAir nowadays (aka Boltbus of the skies)...

Economy meals have essentially disappeared on most medium haul routes. Corona feels more like an excuse to further downgrade flight experience, like 911 was 20 years ago with US carriers...I however had a nice surprise with Delta last year on longhaul economy, but the rest...that's about it.

Smoking was the part of beginning of the degeneracy we see in women today. Marketing people such as the kite Edward Bernays targeted the vanity of women. Their need for social status etc and it became seen as sophisticated. (Of course the women actually became haggard). Things have become much worse of course and manipulations into political correctness and sexual amorality has come next. This is why Rotherham happens and continues to do so. Men of course have also been manipulated, but it seems less so. Many people have resisted but it’s clear we lost a lot.

Hmm I don't agree with this one.I'm still young yet old enough to remember ''good ol'days'' when smoking was allowed on airplanes, and trust me, I don't miss it at all. Not only was it potentially dangerous, it was also disgusting for non smoking PAX (like my family and me). I remember seats with ashtrays completely full, cigarette smoke that would go above smoking sections and fall down on our seat rows (and I as a kid inhaling it), plus this horrible cold tobacco smell that was still present thoughout the cabin during the entire flight. I do miss a ton of things from my childhood flying experience (like big meals in economy which now you only get in business class, the much easier boarding process, etc). But inflight smoking ? Hell no.

@@that90skid72 Er, agreed. Perhaps I should've put a /s at the end of my post to indicate sarcasm. Thems were the days that smoking and eating At The Same Time was so perfectly normal that it was included in a promo film lol.

@@that90skid72 You anti-smokers never give up your anti-smoking whinging do you. Stop always spoiling things for others and get a life.

@@gorpalm1 FYI it was considered extremely rude to smoke at the table while others were still eating.

The Concorde was built by Russia.

+MarLap2000 The Russians built the copy-cat Concordski, which crashed. Never to be seen again.

+propjetelectra I'm not defending Miles because his comment is inaccurate, but the actual number of passenger flights the Tu-144 made is unclear. Some were promotional flights but most agree that it made very few made revenue flights with passengers. There was also the likely loss of a second Tu-144, but the details of that were withheld by the Soviets. So the aircraft went on to became the most expensive cargo hauler ever, for a short time at least, and it was withdrawn quietly when it became apparent they couldn't work out the bugs. Concorde won that battle no matter who was first.

The VC10 merely required a further stretch to make it bigger at an acceptable compromise in takeoff run. Boeing had to try 4 times to get the 707 right including increases in diameter and length. The initial model was merely a revamped refuelling tanker. The Super VC10 was initially going to be a double stretch. Airbus is only a success because of the fortitude of the Germans. Airbus arose out of a British study that showed that British aircraft were 20% more expensive to produce than US because of smaller production runs and that should U.K. France and Germany launch an aircraft simultaneously they would likely fail. European Cooperation was thus recommended. The Airbus A300 was supposed to be a 300 seater. It was UK 37.5%, France 37.5% and Germany 25%. The A300 was seen as too big and was reduced to a 250 seat A250 (the marketing name was however restored to A300). This meant that the Rolls Royce RB207 was no longer required and the B747 GE CF6 or PW4000 could be used. This was a good thing as RR was bad at keeping promises and was in the process of destroying Lockheed and Itself over the RB211. With RR out the UK Government left and the program faced cancellation however the Germans said they would take on 50% if the French would as well. Britain wasn’t totally out as Hawker Siddley had designed a Brilliant supercritical wing for the A300 that gave it best climb and fuel efficiency of any airliner. Hawker Siddely put in 37.5 million pounds of their own money and the German Government leant them 37.5 interest free for tooling. The A300 initially sold poorly as the idea of a short ranged big aircraft didn’t work due to frequency but when given improved range its sales increased. It sold well in Asia where the US FAA 1 hour restriction for twins over water didn’t hold. It then started selling in the US due to superior economy In transcontinental flights. Also it’s ability to carry LD3 unit load device pallets was persuasive. British government came back in for the A320 program. Today Britain is center of excellence for wing construction.

As all British Made Planes

Having the engines that high up means FOD is seldom an issue which given the airfields they were expected to be operated from were little more than dirt strips with concrete over the top was a serious consideration, unlike the 707s. The 707s on the BOAC fleet spent twice the time AOG than the VC10s

Rocktopia Probably, the Yellow Pages !

Bible

Rocktopia bible

Yes, he is a theology student!!

No way. The VC-10 could not make Jo'burg to LHR nonstop. Not sure where they stopped to refuel, probably Nairobi or Cairo.

It flew for 51 years from 1962 until 2013 when the Royal Air Force retired its last VC10's

Yes but smoke usually filled the entire airplane, as curtains weren't doing much to avoid that. One of the few things I won't miss, at all TBH.

@@that90skid72 As the smoking and non smoking sections were not separated by curtains I assume you are a young anti-smoking person who has never flown on an aircraft where smoking was permitted having the usual anti-smoking whinge

@@Ben-xe8ps Yes, I did you ignorant snotty know-it-all. I can recall my parents asking for non smoking seats while checking-in at the airport during the summer holiday. And I can also perfectly recall a flight from Athens on an Olympic Airways A300, where we had seats only 2-3 rows behind the smokers section's curtain. Needless to say we inhaled cigarette smoke throughout the trip. It was disgusting. You don't get to judge me, I grew up in a country where a vast majority of adults smoked, everywhere, all day long. I was blessed to have two non-smoking parents, that was a rarity at the time.

@@Ben-xe8ps Oh, and in case you wonder: when I flew as a young kid, you either had smoking or non smoking areas marked on your ticket. And for your own little culture, some airlines like AF or OA did separate cabin with curtains at the time (pre 9/11), between economy and business, and in economy between smoking and non smoking sections. Oh, on trains as well in Europe you had such sections too. I still remember the delicious (puky) smell of cold tobacco. Yummy !

@@that90skid72 You had no such thing marked on your ticket. It would be shown on your boarding card if you had selected a smoking or non-smoking seat at check in. I have never encountered such curtained off dividers between smoking and non-smoking sections on any aircraft and I often flew as a passenger more than 100 flights a year in Europe (I am not American by the way) pre-9/11 (what has 9/11 got to do with anything?) as a smoking adult not a little kid. Different classes were and still are divided by curtains but not smoking sections and non-smoking sections within the same class. Yes trains had smoking and non-smoking sections but I have NEVER seen a dividing curtain between such sections in my life on a train.

Check out business class on an Airbus A 380. The food looks pretty good there.