Unique Olfactory Creation

The last 36 hours has made me feel like I was born 60 years too late. The original Kangaroo route, first operated by Qantas in 1947 on a Lockheed Constellation, left Sydney and travelled through Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo, Tripoli and finally onto London. You would stay overnight in Singapore and Cairo. The flight was an experience in itself. Of course, it only carried 29 people plus the 11 crew (who, one can only assume, were mostly female apart from the pilots) and cost, according to our good friends at Wikipedia, £585, which at the time equated to 130 weeks of the average pay. So yeah, you probably weren't gonna end up with a family of 4 sitting behind you, and a 10 year old in front of you that JUST HAS to have her seat back the WHOLE FLIGHT. Cause, leg room and stuff, you know. Air travel used to be an adventure. Now, not so much.

This is mainly because no matter how much money you spend on creating ginormous aircraft, double decked and capable of seating entire failed olympic teams, you can't make the economy experience anything more than bearable...

The Qantas A380 Airbus is an intimidating airplane. It seats a LOT of people. But the economy flyer is always the bottom of the tree. You board last, through different doors to those wonderfully lucky people who made it to a higher class, and make your way slowly down the aisles to your seat. The whole time, you are imagining how it will be a better experience than all those other times you flew. It's got to be, right? The plane's NEW! There's definitely gonna be enough room to spread out your Uni books and get that assignment done! And you'll sit there and read your book and watch your laptop, and there'll be nobody next to you cause the airline is going broke and can't get people on it's international flights...

It is therefore an ultimately disappointing experience when you squeeze your way into the seat and discover it's just like all those other times you flew economy. Really uncomfortable.

That's not to say it's not better. The entertainment is great. The seat is slightly more comfortable. The food appears to be slightly more edible (there was even a small rasher of bacon.) The taps in the toilets are sensors now, and you can change the temperature (This was probably my favourite part of the flight. I really am that sad.) But at the end of the day, you're still gonna be sitting upright, with 380 other people, for close to 24 hours. And when you arrive at your destination, every one of you will smell like bottled arse sweat.

There's no adventure to air travel now. Just like internet porn, the romance has gone and it is now just a means to an end...

RaC

(So, we're in London. Plans are forthcoming, and tiredness is starting to massively set in, but I'm gonna try and push through for the next few hours and then get a decent sleep hopefully. Tomorrow, I'm thinking I might do a blog about Clapham and the "London" style of suburbs. Then there'll probably be some stuff about London history, a couple of West End show reviews, and who knows what else. Jus should have some photos up soon.)