Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

When flying was fun

It’s been all downhill since the glorious anarchy of the Lollipop Special

‘Gangs of small kids roamed up and down the aisles having food fights’ [Fox Photos / Stringer/Getty Images]

On the BOAC VC10 flights to Nairobi, the pilots would invite children like me up to sit in the cockpit with them. Once they put me behind the controls and I was very nervous about making a wrong move that could throw us into a tailspin. I had a BOAC badge and a Junior Jet Club book, which the captain kindly signed for me on each voyage. Attractive stewardesses served breakfast, lunch and supper with metal cutlery, the seats were huge with loads of legroom for tall men and the adults puffed away on cigarettes. The cabin was ultra-quiet because the four big Rolls-Royce engines were in the tail, rather than under the wings. Somebody up there cares about you, the advertisements said. Before the Super VC10s came in, we’d fly on the East African Airways Comet 4, its interior all decorated with pictures of wildlife and Bert Kaempfert’s ‘A Swingin’ Safari’ tootling away before take-off and when you landed at Nairobi Embakasi airport. As you disembarked in the warm African twilight, crowds on the viewing deck overlooking the runway would be there, waving and cheering as they caught sight of loved ones coming home at last.

A guard searching my bags in Uganda took out my family-sized can of tear gas and queried what it was

In those years British children all over the world had a wonderful time flying home to Kai Tak, Paya Lebar and Lagos International. When we had to go back to school in rainy old England, the airlines laid on a Lollipop Special, the entire flight filled with school kids of all ages. Near anarchy erupted before we even began taxiing and then it went on like that until Gatwick. Young bloods pilfered the galleys of gin and whisky miniatures. Gangs of small kids roamed up and down the aisles having food fights.

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