Hear how converted First World War bombers became the first very basic, uncomfortable, noisy, cold, unreliable (and risky) airliners.

Roughing it in a converted bomber would have got you bragging rights at home in 1920.....

....but as the decade progressed, the demand was for comfort.

Airliners quickly became more comfortable -- and much more reliable. Now the wealthy and the famous took to the skies, as air travel became exciting, fashionable and glamorous. In-flight meals were now served on china plates with fine cutlery, and drinks came in crystal glasses.

By the end of the 1920s Imperial Airways could fly you in comfort, in a four-engined Handley Page HP.42 airliner, all the way to India. The journey took eight days, flying only by day, and staying overnight in luxurious hotels, or sometimes in a desert fort with armed guards to protect you, and the aircraft, from raids by Bedouin nomads.

Something else to brag about at home!

THIS TALK BRINGS A UNIQUE PERIOD IN AIR TRAVEL HISTORY VIVIDLY TO LIFE.

Then came the 1930s, the years of the big flying boats....   

....the supreme way of travelling the world in comfort and style in the 1930s.

In 1934 Imperial Airways and Qantas launched their joint Britain - Australia service.

The aircraft they used was the Short C-Class Empire flying boat, much loved by passengers and crews, which would grace the imperial air routes until the late 1940s.

Now you could fly all the way from Southampton to Brisbane, again flying only by day, with overnight stays in hotels. The journey took twelve days, but that was four times faster than an ocean liner.

It would fall to the Americans to fit the final pieces of the world-wide air travel jigsaw in place. 

Pan-American Airways' huge Boeing 314 Clippers began flights across the Pacific. Pan-Am also flew the first trans-Atlantic scheduled aeroplane flights in 1939, just weeks before the start of the Second World War.

And after the war, just as in 1919......

wartime bomber designs became the new airliners.  Lancaster bombers....

....became Lancastrian airliners.

A new generation of four-engined airliners were poised to conquer the world.

They were bigger, faster, higher, and they had longer range.

By the 1950s The first jets were flying, ushering in the modern world of mass air travel that we all know and (don't) love.

The Golden Age of air travel was coming to an end.