Give them massive numbers, that’ll impress them. The Secret Life of the Long Haul Flight (Channel 5) is one of those documentaries that does that, right from the off: each year, 300 million passengers fly more than 6bn miles on long-haul flights. Some of them on an Airbus A380, which costs £280m, carries 484 passengers, is 73 metres long, 25 metres high ...
Enough of the numbers! I want stories and secrets. And, to be fair, I do get both. We follow one Qantas flight, from London to Sydney, before takeoff, during the journey, after landing. And we go all over – the hangars, the hold, the cockpit, cabin and crew quarters. Flight attendants get bunk beds on an Airbus A380; it looks pretty cosy down there.
We meet passengers, too. Like Malcolm, who is off to meet the three sisters he never knew he had. And Sean, who is going to surprise his mum. And Belinda, an actor, who gets upgraded. “I’ve never flown any kind of class except ecomedy” she says comedically to her fiancee Alice. I like Belinda. And Mitzy and Alfie, who are in the hold because they’re furry. Pets are right under first class; sometimes they can be heard down there, barking. You might have your champagne and your flat bed, but you didn’t sleep a wink did you, because of the howling hounds?
My favourite story is about back in the day, on the flying boat service to Australia, when passengers would be offered fishing lines at refuelling stops. Now that is classy. So what if the trip took nine days and the chances are you were violently sick most of the time? You got to go fishing!
In Sydney there are hugs and tears and lots of catching up to do for Malcolm and his new sisters. Sean bursts out of a gift-wrapped box and nearly gives his mum a heart attack for her birthday. Belinda tells her mum about playing Judy Garland in the West End. The postscript says her show opened to rave reviews, and when checking if this is true (it is) I find that Belinda has the same surname as me. Maybe she’s my long lost sister down under.