Freddie Laker obit

ON A September day in 1977 Freddie Laker’s first Skytrain flight to New York took off from Gatwick. It was the first low-cost (£55 one way), no-frills service, and it created a new breed of leisure traveller. It had taken six years of hard negotiation and battle with governments and airlines on both sides of the Atlantic. . .

From 1977 until 1982 Skytrain was a revolutionary success. In London people queued for reservations in the streets outside Laker’s offices at Victoria. . .

In the late 1970s he applied for licences for around 140 European routes which were intended to open up the European market to lower fares.

But this initiative prompted a number of national carriers — among them British Airways, Pan Am, TWA and Air India — to hold secret meetings to devise a strategy to close Laker down. . .

I don't have the time to write it myself, but I'd love to be able to read a good social history of the postwar development of mass travel. Discount airfares on one hand (and, earlier, cut-rate transatlantic sea passage), guides from Europe on $5 a Day to Let's Go. I still goggle at how much travel has changed since I was a grad student -- let alone since the family trips of my boyhood.

Posted by David on February 11, 2006 10:26 AM