Those really were the days:
B.E.A. Silver Wing Service — 1952
Every day, at lunch-time, 40-seat “Silver Wing” Elizabethans fly between London and Le Bourget. This service is claimed by B.E.A. to be the finest means of inter-city travel anywhere in Europe (a claim, incidentally, which has gained much support from passengers since the inaugural flight on June 9th), and increased bookings are expected to compensate for the loss of seating. The fare is the standard one of £8 17s, and passengers are provided with a four-course lunch, champagne and cigarettes.
The Silver Wing lunches are cooked just before take-off by B.E.A. chefs in the catering section at London Airport. Meals are then placed in specially designed G.E.C. electrically-heated containers, each capable of holding 12 plates or one and a half gallons of liquid. Shortly before take-off the two stewards arrive to check the contents of the containers, which are then taken out to the aircraft and plugged into suitable power points in the galley. The containers have glass-wool insulation to ensure that no heat is lost in transit to the aircraft. At the same time the stewardess takes charge of blankets, newspapers, magazines and “flight companions” (small personal folders for each passenger containing airmail paper, a post card, route map, and a printed brochure describing the aircraft).
Flight companions, incidentally, are expensively produced and form a fairly weighty item in the airline budget so with their contents often scattered around the aircraft at the end of the flight, economy-minded B.E.A. salvages and repacks them for further use!
Below is a typical B.E.A. Silver Wing menu:
• Potted Morecambe shrimps, brown bread and butter
• Roast Norfolk turkey with braised York ham,
• Kentish scarlet runner beans
• New Jersey potatoes
• Cape pears preserved in port
• Cheddar cheese
• Water biscuits
• Rolls and butter
• Coffee
The Silver Wing service takes ten minutes longer than the normal London-Paris run by Elizabethans, which normally cover the 216-mile route in 1 hr 20 min. Even so, stewards and stewardess are kept constantly on their feet serving the meals and drinks which, as the menu indicates, more than compensate the passengers for the slight delay in their journey.
