The ‘Air Travel Master Plan’, the so called ‘Flight Codex’ – Part 1

Up until the mid 70’s, air travel was very limited. The planes were the same size, but there were simply a lot less of them. People travelling by plane were business men, rock groups or people going somewhere where no bus could travel. The large travel agencies were still very much focused on buses, trains and cars.

Life on board of an airplane was almost like a Roman food orgy. More stewardesses than passengers, more food than one could chew and alcohol was flowing as if there was no tomorrow. Finally a transportation method where it wasn’t merely allowed to get drunk, no, the stewardesses spent all their time and energy in actually getting you drunk. Ok, you had to wear a seat belt when landing and taking off, but during the flight it was one big party. Cigarettes, cigars, wine, gin, vodka, it didn’t matter; air travel was all about getting to your destination in a cloud of alcohol and smoke.

Then, we’re talking end of the 70’s, there was a change. A British travel agency, we’re not allowed to reveal the name, decided that it would be a brilliant idea to ‘bring air travel to the masses’. This idea would be perfected to a tee in the second half of the 90’s by a company called Ryanair, but that’s a different story.

To get things going, the British Travel Agency started booking literally entire flights to destinations like Torremolinos and Tenerife and created brochures filled with photos of smiling stewardesses dressed in short skirts and showing trays of delicious food with happy drunk business men in the background toasting their dry Martinis.

This, it turned out, was exactly what the masses had been waiting for.

The first season of ‘Air Travel for the Masses’ was a big success. Airlines were suddenly making profits and the entire Spanish coast instantly resembled the famous British coastal town of Flingshire Upon Lavin.

So? All for the better, right?

Wrong. The airlines panicked. This was not what they were in business for. The stewardesses complained about the workload and about sweaty fat bellied Englishmen (m/f) who called them ‘love’ all the time. Instead of 25 inebriated business men, they now had to deal with 130 gin and tonic slurping football shirts. The situation called for an urgent meeting.

The meeting was held between October 17th and October 22nd, 1979. Present were all the major European airlines at the time. For obvious reasons I can’t list their names, but if you’ve ever played the game ‘Jumbo Jet’, you know exactly who were present. Yes, the red, green, dark blue, light blue, white and yellow ‘airplane tails’ were all there.

This meeting would shape the future of Air Travel. It is the reason why Air Travel is what it is today. It is the birth of a concept so devilish in design that no one has even contemplated the idea that it is in fact ‘a design’. At the end of the meeting, the 6 major European Airlines had created the ‘Flight Codex’, the ‘Air Travel Master Plan’.