THERE'S NO TELLING ABOUT CHARTERED FLIGHTS
Thomson, Peggy Bebie
There's No Telling About Chartered Flights by PEGGY BEBIE THOMSON This is the time of year when charter flights are winging their way to and from Europe like so many flocks of honking geese. From...
...That seems to be the central fact of the charter flights...
...They may not be able to make it cross-country to the Seattle fair...
...Not fair to the charter flights, that is, which have their pretensions, too...
...The only jolt came at the end of the ride when the driver, after a hasty consultation with the airport traffic man, said that we were all to remain seated until our plane was located...
...Just because you're an old hand don't let it go to your head...
...You were looking for a bargain...
...When we arrived at Idlewild, we were just as glad we hadn't checked any further on him...
...Within minutes of landing in Paris our family met with a plumbing breakdown in which a temporarily distressed fixture on the sixth floor of our walkup hotel transported us, quite without benefit of flight plan, directly into a, Paris sewer atmosphere a la Victor Hugo...
...In our case, when the flight gate was at last opened to us and we burst out toward the ramp, there was something about the general outline of our plane, as well as its lack of glister, that disheartened us just a bit...
...The pilots, it turned out, were the officials...
...For people with handsome incomes this may be fine...
...So why not be willing to take the big leap forward...
...The charter flights refer to themselves as non-scheduled airlines or non-scheds, and it is at your own risk that you neglect taking them quite literally...
...Someone in line asked whether it was the usual thing to find wire strung from the wings of the plane to the tail...
...As it turned out, it was a simple matter to switch buses...
...Clearly its most recent home had been the ground floor display in the Smithsonian Institution...
...You realize that charter lines can't simply roll out another plane...
...If the way things are run on a charter flight is not entirely understandable, remind yourself that the people in charge are dispensing with elaborate routines to cut costs to the bpne—for you...
...Let me, as an old hand, give some advice...
...At six the next morning, well rested, we responded promptly to the summons by phone to meet with a representative of our airline in the lobby...
...Anyone can get into the act...
...But even among these there must be some who are not amused by the combination variety show and captain's dinner the airlines feel compelled to put on for the entertainment of the passengers...
...Disneyland will never be able to imitate it...
...Really no problems at all...
...If what you see induces panic, don't look...
...One of the best ways, they suggest, is to refrain from pointing out in each country you visit how much better things are done at home...
...And unanimous if the babies hadn't all, just fifteen minutes earlier, toppled into their first sound sleep of the trip...
...What you may have forgotten is just what planes used to look-like...
...We have made only one round trip this way, but we learned a lot...
...Nor was it particularly reassuring to hear that the oversight had been to fill the gas tanks...
...After the surprises of a charter flight you may be a bit weary (which is bad for a holiday), but the Alice-in-Wonderland atmosphere will probably sustain you into the next chapter...
...But we pushed the most distinguished member of our party forward, and he was able to convince the driver that we were all assembled, had Cfur hand baggage with us, and as political scientists could board the bus in orderly fashion without supervision...
...If he would prefer to get a start on his summer reading or take a nap, the airline can't be blamed for thinking he should have stayed at Walden Pond...
...But at the current low cost of charter flights to Europe they can scarcely afford to stay home...
...You are a tonic for the national image...
...The rest of us made the maCure observation that this sort of thing happens even with modern equipment...
...It was simply the lack of a scale...
...As she outlined our plans to bus to a motel for the night, she again made a rather unhappy choice of words, saying that we'd "try again" in the morning...
...Where does experience come cheaper...
...And since there are more than 1700 such charter flights each year, a confirmed "joiner" can probably choose among several—the PEGGY BEBIE THOMSON is a fledgling free lance writer...
...The first letter, on the strength of which we made outlandish plans for a summer abroad and sent in our deposit, announced a TWA flight leaving Idlewild in mid-June, ten-hours non-stop to Paris, returning early September, price $260...
...When we tried to relate our adventures, they always beat us to the punch-lines...
...What again nibbled at a sense of full confidence was not the loss of the fourth engine so much as the way the stewardess implied the crew's considerable gratification at the functioning of three...
...As a charter flight type you are probably able to oblige the President in this respect without even trying...
...We refrained, even though there were a number of experts on public administration in our party...
...All he has to do is belong to a reasonably alive organization or be willing to join one...
...The scheduled airlines, though they have the distinct advantage of flying faster and oftener, cost two or three times as much...
...You know you are not supposed to be asking what your country can be doing for you...
...What you may not appreciate at first is that it is a kindness on their part to rid you so early of the notion of scheduling your vacation days...
...More delays mean more safety...
...Some of them, scorning the box lunch, serve up a real three-asterisk meal—and stewardesses quite as chic and generously endowed as their sisters on the main lines...
...There are worse things' than minimum benefits...
...I think we would have been a great deal more confident on our flight if we hadn't been stopped right at the ramp to the plane and sent back into the terminal...
...Remember, it can happen anywhere...
...It would have been standing but for the seatbelts...
...The airlines had called her three times—once at two a.m...
...We recently took a charter flight to Europe— my husband, three children, and I— through our membership in the American Political Science Association...
...If it were efficient, it might cost more...
...The non-sched nature of the flight we took should have been evident to us somewhat earlier than it was...
...Keep flexible and don't oversimplify the problem you're dealing with...
...She added that we might be interested to know that the bus we had boarded was bound for a day's sightseeing in New York City...
...to ask if she were a passenger, once to tell her of the early morning rendezvous with the representative, and again to ask if he were there...
...The driver at first demanded to see an airline official...
...to two p.m...
...The patches of black around the engines should assure you that it actually has flown...
...If you think you can count on engine trouble and delays on the return trip, you've missed the point...
...Just because your craft has the lackluster of a hunk of lead, it doesn't mean it won't fly...
...Coming back we had no such problems...
...And so had the airline—to another quite as anonymous as the previous one...
...Anyway, we made it...
...The driver wished to assure us, he said, that our plane was on the ground—this, we told him, we believed—and that he would let us out as soon as it was found...
...And some people found that being bunched up this way in line for several hours gave them an opportunity to find which of the other passengers were quiet enough—and thin enough—to be desirable seat-mates...
...When the day comes, though, that some airline carries through with its announced intention to surprise passengers with birthday cakes—the dates to be sleuthed in advance from passports—even the most free-spending passengers may do well to look into charter flights...
...A fishmonger handling a mess of customers this way would have been out of business in three days...
...A system of numbers for passengers waiting in line, such as butcher shops and bakeries use, would cost nothing more than the scraps of paper to write the numbers on, but it is courteous to the airline providing such bargain transportation to refrain from saying so...
...True, the departure time was—on the day of departure—unaccountably moved eight hours earlier, from ten p.m...
...There was just something not entirely contemporary about its design...
...The flight plan called for two refueling stops, and the flying time had stretched by some five or six hours...
...To get down to a case...
...But the destination, at least, was the same...
...And charter flights may be safest of all...
...We" vaguely remembered having seen such wires on planes before, but in this case it looked very much as if the wires were holding things together while the household cement dried...
...When a bus labeled "charter" arrived at the door we dispatched one of our number to find her (strangely, none of us remembers seeing him arrive in Paris with us), and the rest of us climbed aboard...
...So far as we were able to make out from the other side of the counter, the scale which eventually arrived had been borrowed for the purpose from someone's bathroom...
...Our stewardess was there, not quite so well rested...
...flights chartered by his professional poultryman's alliance, chowder society, bowling league, or Bible class— depending on whether he wants to land in London, Madrid, Luxembourg, or Paris...
...And each communication had something to say...
...As we lined up again, we were beginning to get a picture of how all our fellow passengers' various drip-dry outfits were going to look for the rest of the summer, compared to their crisp appearance at our original lineup...
...Something different, at that...
...It had four engines...
...Not all the staff of Berlitz could have prepared us half so well as our charter flight...
...Several months later a second letter gave the exact date and time and mentioned that our airline would not be TWA after all, but another, bearing a name quite unknown to us...
...It was found, and the flight, once we made it, was nothing...
...For one thing, your President wants you to drop as little American gold abroad as possible...
...But lest anyone think it is just a cheaper way to get somewhere, let me add that charter flying is quite a special way of travel...
...The friends we queried said they thought the man who lent his name to the airline was last featured in the news as supplying planes to the Flying Tigers or to a Middle Eastern potentate—or it might have been to Middlewestern Air Fairs...
...Accept with grace not only the initial breakdown (you can even predict it, if you like tp outploy the other passengers) but the sheer lunacy of events developing from it...
...On one round trip a passenger may have', going over, free rounds of drinks (there are more hours than on jets for drinks to go round in, remember) and a boeuf bourgignon...
...But with charter flights there's no telling about such things in advance...
...We were instructed in the use of our inflatable life vests and within ten minutes came in for a smooth landing beside our original gate at Idle-wild...
...On the basis of this experience we are confirmed charter flyers...
...You know from the start that you are not riding a Boeing 707...
...Get into a non-sched mood...
...In our hearing she was again summoned to the phone to be asked if she knew who the representative might be...
...With the plane's air-conditioner on the blink, everyone fell into a warm doze—including the babies, who slept all the way home cradled between the cartons of duty-free booze bought during the rather tiresome three-hour refueling stop at Shannon...
...After the first critical ten minutes were over, and Idlewild nowhere in sight, our stewardess, in keeping with a pattern that had been firmly established, announced that a few changes had been made in the flight plan...
...And it was also evident not only how many babies were making the trip with us but exactly what they thought of it...
...Through the - Looking Glass is out...
...Within days we had baffling encounters with a shoestore owner who had a glorious assortment of styles but only one pair of shoes in each size, and a wild-eyed laundress who in unimaginable frenzies reduced our vat-dyed, sanforized, permanent-finished traveling outfits, labels and all, to a matched set of mauve uniforms...
...So we were inclined, floating in our private tubs, to sympathize with the airline's problems...
...Between the first letter announcing the flight and the actual departure we received only a fraction of the letters we got from a single book club we had no intention of joining...
...But apparently passengers in the know who were going through the Louvre at a run to get it all in were sufficiently conspicuous to elicit queries from other passengers, who then started running, jtoo...
...Soon after, with a baleful chorus from the babies, we took off...
...The delay in our case was not, as we suspected, that the pilots behind the counter were awaiting the arrival of the airline officials to check in our luggage...
...It's not fair to put the choice simply on a basis of luxury versus roughing it...
...From April through October, these flights are loaded with passengers who have come up with some happy financial calculations...
...He may get a clammy packet of sandwiches coming back...
...At this she disappeared either to find or to hire one...
...And you are mentally and emotionally prepared (which is good for a holiday) for the quirks of fate awaiting Americans abroad—especially the ones having to do with breakdowns in communication, planning, and equipment...
...Not that it was small...
...We didn't even think it...
...In truth, the accommodations— free—to which we were assigned while awaiting our next "try" were far grander than any that most of us would command for the rest of the summer...
...Surely one .summer your old Hudson had three1 flat tires within half an hour after leaving home on a 4,000-mile vacation trip...
...The babies were all silent, presumably satisfied with their trip...
...The appointed place of departure had changed...
...After the trip we made via charter flight, somehow we weren't tempted to say it...
...Beyond this, his Peace Corps hopes you will even make friends for us abroad...
...The whole process of waiting in a tight clump, hours long, was repeated at the flight gate...
...In spite of the fact that people wanting to greet us at Idlewild continued to be told by the airline that our plane was due at ten in the morning, we deplaned at three a.m...
...Remember, too, that a shiny appearance has nothing to do with performance...
...This was not a very smooth operation, as those who got the instructions first were at the head of the line and met considerable opposition from those at the back who didn't hear and were pressing forward...
...Try to jog your memory in advance and to limber up your imaginative powers by glancing through some Emett drawings of endearing old locomotives and the early carriers of airmail...
...Not only that—they get more luxurious every year...
...In Switzerland we met people who had arrived on other charter flights from South Africa and South Dakota, and we gathered what had happened to us was pretty universal...
...Be generous enough to admire the alternatives they improvise...
...You've known what happens to well-laid plans ever since you learned Robert Burns' poem in elementary school...
...We had lost only two passengers in the night, presumably to scheduled flights, and we rollicked along to the airport in high spirits...
...But we were on the brink of adventure, and consistency is said to lend a kind of dignity to an absurd routine...
...in the fluorescent blue of a deserted customs room and opened our grubby duffles for the yawning inspectors...
...When the stewardess came she congratulated us warmly for the way our group was able to manage on its own responsibility...
...There just is no telling...
...Delays are for your own safety...
...When we touched ground at Orley airfield outside Paris, the stewardess received an ovation—something I've never seen happen on a flight before...
...And no telling about some things which at the start the passengers, at least, think are fairly important...
...Hotel keepers and friends with whom you have fixed appointments by mail may never appreciate it, but your holiday will benefit from the necessarily relaxed attitude...
...Somewhat disconcertingly, the cost dropped $25...
...Today the air passenger high over the Atlantic sits for his souvenir photograph with a drink in his hand, a boar's head studded with caviar canapes at his elbow, and a movie queen on the screen before him competing with the uniformed rockettes prancing up and down the aisle...
...We put this down to jealousy...
Vol. 26 • September 1962 • No. 9
