I still dream about my first aeroplane ride. Not wanting to appear gauche, there was no question of allowing this crazy excitement expression at that time. And the feeling itself has become muted over time. It is only through the eyes of child passengers that I occasionally relive it these days. Richard Branson is a very different cookie type of course, almost from another planet. He has been on balloons, bungee cords, parasails and home-made flying machines. He is planning to celebrate his 60th birthday kitesurfing across the English Channel, accompanied by his children and some nephews. He is also the founder of the diversified Virgin group of companies, which includes plain vanilla airlines, as well as Virgin Galactic, an ambitious plans foray into space travel. So what might this flying czar have in common with the ordinary airline passenger?
In Reach for the skies, Branson inserts himself in an august genealogy of adventurers, engineers, scientists and, above all, visionaries who make up the history of flying. Given how often he has been labelled a public relations junkie, one couldn’t be blamed for imagining this book project is just another attempt to gain free coverage. Except, while it oozes an unashamedly personalised spirit, the book is also enormously informative, as well as good fun. For instance, one learns how the likes of Montgolfier brothers and Jean Pierre Blanchard pioneered ballooning amidst great mystery. Early balloonists would fire up with everything from wool to old shoes, amidst speculation that it was the smoke (rather than the heat) that was making their balloons rise! As ballooning took off, so did parachuting. After all, one needed a reliable escape vehicle. Experiments in both ballooning and parachuting relied on animals at that time. At a 1783 demonstration in Versailles, one of the royals objected to the use of animals, only because condemned criminals would have made more cost-effective fodder.
Kick-started by WWI, civil aviation took off more strongly in Europe than in the US. Empires needed holding together and governments were willing to pick up the tab. In the US, it was Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 Atlantic crossing that changed the game. The 5,782 passengers who flew on US airlines in 1926 multiplied to 1,73,405 by 1929. It helped that so many planes had been decommissioned after WWI that people could take a $500 instruction course and get a biplane free on the side. On a grimmer side, there were periods during the war period when the British pilot’s life expectancy on the Western front was merely three weeks. In fact, manned flights had been theoretically integrated into the war effort from their very beginnings.
Fast forward a century and September 11, 2001, changes everything. Faster, more affordable air travel had created new global lifestyles and business modules. While nothing could reverse this cycle, security concerns forced a reconsideration of hitherto accepted policies. Branson doesn’t complain about additional security measures, but he asks why these are insensitive and shoddy. ?You want me to queue for half an hour? If you must?but how about a bottle of water while I’m waiting? You want to X-ray my shoes? Fine. How about giving me a chair so that I can put them back on?? And this is where the ordinary passenger might find it worth her while to read this book. Why, we can ask, shouldn’t our flying experience remain exciting and?at the least?comfortable?
Branson’s philosophy is that airline staff are in the entertainment business; they should be making air journeys just a little bit more magical. No wonder Virgin was reportedly the first airline to equip every coach seat with video displays and the the first to offer in-flight massage and manicure services. Those who fly economy class might lower expectations a bit, but even we have the right to an agreeable experience, the right not to be made miserable by want of water or clean rest rooms or promptitude in general. The airline industry, Branson underlines, ties people in narrow metal tubes for hours at a time and insists that they do exactly what they’re told. It is, indeed, a security consideration to remember that this is asking ?a hell of a lot from human nature?.
Whatever happens to the Virgin airline empire (let’s remember a key lesson of this history book, that a barrowload of luck is an essential for all great aviators), its fun motif is robust and credible. As the Virgin Galactic engineer, Burt Rutan, argued before US lawmakers in 2005, fun is not an embarrassing raison d’etre for multi-billion dollar businesses. Not only did personal computers start life in amusement arcades, the first passenger planes flew up as joyrides.