May 10th - A look back at the history of British domestic flights
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this day in 1919, the first commercial air service in Britain began – from Manchester to Southport, a distance of just 40 miles. In the 104 years since then, the range of UK domestic flights has waxed and waned.
I'm at Luton airport, where EasyJet began in 1995 as a purely domestic airline with links to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
As rail links have improved, links like this have reduced – but Northern Ireland and Cornwall continue to benefit from planes rather than terrestrial links.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder back at lovely Luton Airport. |
| 0:11.9 | And I want to talk today, it being the 10th of May, about domestic flights within the UK. |
| 0:18.6 | And the reason is that on this very day, in 1919, the first commercial air service within the UK took off. |
| 0:30.6 | It went from Manchester to Southport. |
| 0:34.6 | So a distance maybe of about 40 miles or so. Not a great distance, but let me tell you what is happening as far as I can see with domestic flying. |
| 0:50.3 | Used to be absolutely huge. There were flights, for example, |
| 0:55.0 | we're not going back a tremendously long time, |
| 0:58.3 | from London Heathrow to Norwich. |
| 1:02.7 | Now, that is exactly the sort of route |
| 1:05.4 | that you would expect to find in the United States. |
| 1:09.6 | So, for example, from Greenville, South Carolina to Atlanta |
| 1:15.3 | is a similar distance as London Heathrow to Norwich. And the idea is, if you've got it a big |
| 1:20.5 | enough, Harba Airport, you'll be able to have all those little connections. Absolutely no chance |
| 1:24.7 | that would happen. There has not been a London Heathrow to Prestwick |
| 1:29.3 | or to Liverpool flight for quite a long time. |
| 1:33.3 | Leeds Bradford is one of these things which is sort of on again, off again, |
| 1:38.3 | not always terribly popular. |
| 1:40.3 | And the key links from London airports are very much Anglo-Scottish and to Northern Ireland |
| 1:51.8 | and it's interesting that we have just seen in the past couple of days the start of |
| 1:59.8 | the Logan Air flights from Heathrow to City of Derrier Airport, |
| 2:05.9 | which is absolutely transformation. |
| 2:08.4 | So strongly to the advantage of the northwest of Northern Ireland, the fact that they |
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