Aircraft Geekery Part 3 - The Flot Factor

Underneath this insane seventies promo video for Aeroflot on youtube, is the wry comment questioning why the airline with the monopoly over the Soviet Union at the time, felt the need to advertise. This incomprehensible advertising decision (one of many) just deepens my love affair with Aeroflot. I find retro Russian aviation culture baffling and fascinating beyond belief. There's something of the Grimm fairytale about it all. It's both glamourous and dark. And I frikkin love those outfits. This isn't the only promo vid I found. But all of them seem to feature the same subservient faux-aryan (check the gloriously dark bushy brows) all-singing, all-dancing stews, who like putting their hands on their hips and kicking their legs, ever so slightly off the beat. Wonderful. It's like the underground silver-screen. 50s Hollywood as Tim Burton would have had it.

I am still enthralled (though less so. But only like 5%. Or say, three chocolate fingers fewer) with post-Soviet era 'Flot ('92 onwards). In order to try and pick apart some of the hear'say regarding the airline's safety (so I don't find myself fibbing in later posts - and also sate my un-ending appetite for all things Slavic) I recently read through 26 customer reviews of recent flights. They oscillated from very good to dreadful to an 'experience.' The biggest gripe is the food, but isn't it always vapid slop with crusty blob-munch, whatever the wing-brand?

On the whole, Flotbags is a pretty good standard these days. It sort of has to be internationally, as there are rules and regs to adhere to if you want to land in foreign airports. The major thing that got most folk down, were the endless and often unexplained delays. And the fact customer service is a recent phenomenon and is deployed much like say, my rusty GCSE French when in Rome. In other words, it's not always spot on. And not always even there at all. But it's not for want of trying. I recently read that Russians have a 'different attitude to smile.' In other words, they don't. Smiling at strangers in Russian culture, is just not done. You don't do it. Stop. Put the smirk away. Fold those corners down. But looking serious is apparently a sign of intelligence. So, perhaps be thrilled when flying Aeroflot, that the stewards may glare at you on arrival. They probably do CPR better.

What I am most intrigued by though are Russia's internal flights. Deliciously, they don't have to conform to international standards. Some are still wobbly Tupelovs, with history for wings, bobbly curtains and a highly skilled Beluga-infused pilot at the helm. This is likely wildly incorrect, but it's what the romantic, dark and tundra-filled wilderness that is my imagination hopes for regardless.

I am going to bore you about this a lot. But for now, Scastlivovo puti. And feast your eyes on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88f3Q32hJ8 - Airplaneski, one of the best documentaries on fabulous Russian flying machines I've ever watched. I tried to embed it here, but it failed. It's possible I might have been smiling too much...

A Tangent. Or a Tangerine?

In Hidden Treasure: Boac Friday, I referenced a 70s satsuma coloured Sindy bathroom suite, which met an untimely end in a fairly necessary loft cleanse. What delight and surprise then, when I stumbled upon the sink portion of said suite in the Cavendish Arms Pub ladies toilets. I laid it within the real sink for a better photo. And also because I've never put a sink in a sink before.

It went well.

It baffled me to the point where I wondered if Cavendish employed junk-foxes had been lying in wait in the woods outside my parent's old house two July's ago. Surely no one else would have owned and actively kept such a useless item.

But the bizarre co-incidence of blogging about, then discovering this obsolete home furnishing from Barbie's arch rival, further proves why The Cavendish pub in Stockwell, is such a magical den of nonsense.

Last count, there were two analogue TV's carefully arranged in the window, old books on everything from puberty to aeroplanes on the shelves, a pram, many pleasing fifties references and some banana cake. All clean, tidily arranged and carefully considered I must add. If something is next to something else, there's definitely a reason for it. I think...

It is a unique looking drinking establishment which I wouldn't be surprised to find had been made entirely by sentient bric-a-brac and candle wax which one day agreed to arrange themselves into four walls and a bar. Its grotto-like brilliance is unrivalled. It's like if Big Trak got drunk and mated with all your favourite board games at Christmas, then birthed a Happy Shrine. I fully expect to find Wee Willie Winkie drinking here. I see him as a Port man.

And because this has accidentally turned into a review, I might as well tell you to go there. Go there. Drink their good red, fail to play Risk properly, listen to what you keep mistaking for as your own i-pod and make sure you eat some Disco Chips. They're what paprika was made for. A light sprinkling of which is almost the same colour as Sindy's legendary wash bowl... Soap, anyone?

Braniff - A Meaty Appendix

On my short Braniff journey, I neglected to mention this: The Branwich (left).

In their heyday, Braniff were so successful in pretty much anything, they created their own glazed meaty branded sandwich, the Branwich. Yes, way.

If you flew Braniff, you got real food. Seventies real, anyway, which meant chunky hunks of moo, four miles of pastry, a clutch of sweaty onions and minimal greens. They prided themselves on having great chefs and had a specific ad campaign devoted solely to spreading the word about, 'the finest food you could ever get in the air.' Apparently the passengers totally dug it.

I'd love to have been in the marketing meeting which preceded the creation of the Branwich:

'Everything is branded, sir. The forks. The pilot's face. He even smiles in the shape of a dove. There's no room for anything else.'

'What about the disposable produce, Chuck? The goddam food? Let's have them taste Braniff. Let's imprint our logo on their frikkin' intestines. They'll be digesting our brand. It'll be in the very fibres of their being. Their fingertips, heart and soul. They will shit Braniff, Chuck. They will be shitting the best airline in existence. They'll be shitting 30,000 feet of success, Chuck. They won't even want to flush. I'll tell you what I want, Chuck. I want a branded sandwich. Something greasy that slides down nicely like a sexy stew on a popped evacuation chute. I hereby announce the creation of the Branwich.'

'...'

'Don't you "..." me.'

A Diversion: Sketch the Future

I was checking out Retronaut the other day for some exciting abandoned boats, and I came across these awesome sketches:

Check out more of them here. They are basically a collection of sketches from 1910 envisioning what life might be like in 2000, with particular reference to machines, transport and gizmos. They are ridiculously quaint, and made me think perhaps you can only conceive the future within the constraints of your current knowledge and surroundings. Everyone is still dressed like it's 1910 (how could they possibly fathom jeans, lycra, zips...pah) and a lot of the adorably daft contraptions have something of the Willy Wonka about them. Maybe, without a crystal ball, you really can't predict future design.

My mum disagrees. She said we already have conceived futuristic design concepts. We may have chosen jet planes over those firemen with foxy dragon-style flight packs as a more commercially viable option, but the wings are there on both. True. On closer inspection the sketch where the architect's vision is built by machines as he designs it from a booth, reminds me of our current ability to scan dimensions and get the computer to build 3D models. Some of the design is there in embryonic form, even if for the most part the depictions are fancy, ornate and hilariously tin-pot. But you've got to start somewhere, right?

My mum's trump card was Italian Renaissance visionary and all-round Big Beard, Leonardo Da Vinci. A very forward thinking engineer, inventor and designer for his time, Da Vinci was responsible for the first known helicopter design in 1495. Flying was the absolute summit of people's conception and Leonardo was obsessed with cracking it. He produced and tested countless designs long before anyone successfully took to the skies. And the 'helicopter' model, though designed within the constraints of the raw materials and knowledge available then had all the makings of a machine built for vertical flight - 500 years before it actually happened.

I'm a massive fan of L'Dav's handwriting. Possibly inspired by the long flowing strokes of his beard...

So hats off to my mum, for blowing my narrow mind. And really, in the light of Apple man Steve Jobs' death, we need more visionaries. However wacky-looking any blueprint might initially be; honed and modified, it might just turn out to be an invention that changes the world.

Whatever happens though, I'm definitely getting me one of these:

Sky Creatures

I said to my flatmate: 'What to write about next? There's too much. I'm categorising...

But how to categorise this?

'Being drawn to old fashioned planes, photographed in either a slightly oppressive black and white or

faded sepia tinted colour, that look occasionally eerie, sometimes wistful, sporadically monstrous, sometimes elegant, the design of which I will only ever see through the lens of someone else I'll never meet and the appeal of which, is that they were all probably a chancier ride back then, with laxer safety procedures, and the crew and passengers were undoubtedly embalmed in an overwhelming fug of tobacco smoke, excitement and hope.'

He said, 'that sounds perfect.'

So I bestow you my favourites. A bogie hued Braniff, two BOACs and two Aeroflots (one of which looks like it's powered by Christmas decorations). Enjoy.