Friday 4 November 2016

BEA flight 130 to Rome


Last week's blog post was my attempt to log Bond's flying map using a great little website called Flight Memory.  Flying in Bond's time was a often a luxury experience, quite different to what the majority of travellers experience today.

On a recent British Airways flight I was browsing through the media on the In Flight Entertainment and found a number of information films produced by BA's predecessors BEA and BOAC in the 1950s & 1960s.

It was interesting to watch one film called "Flight Plan".  This surrounds BEA flight 130 from London to Rome.  So what is the link to Bond?  Well in the novel From Russia With Love, Bond takes the same flight BEA flight 130 from London to Istanbul with stops at Rome and Athens.  This film looks like it was filmed in the late 1950s so gives you a feel for what flying was like at the time.


BA's synopsis of the film is "At the viewing balcony on the roof of the Queens Building at Heathrow Airport two debonair jetsetters (played by the same actor) feel they must have met before. In the style of an Ealing comedy, this film reveals the behind the scenes activities of staff at BEA."



Anyway, if you are desperate to watch this and you have no BA flights planned in the near future, the film is apparently included on this DVD.