Monday 31 October 2016

BEA takes you there..?


Being a bit of a map geek and also someone who travels a lot for work, I like to log my trips so I can look back on all the different places I have visited over the years.

There are a number of websites that can be used for logging flights and my favourite is Flight Memory.  This site combines ease of use together with some fun maps and statistics on your personal travel history.

During the 1950s and early 1960s when the Bond novels were written, flying was not something that most people would experience and the books often describe the luxury of plane journeys during this "golden age" of travel.


Using the information from Fleming's books, John Griswold's excellent chronology, this brilliant forum post plus some of my own research, I have built Bond's own Flight Memory page.

The example below is Bond's journey from London to Istanbul in From Russia With Love and shows the detail that can be inputted.  Timings were calculated using historical timetables.


We can see some nice maps of Bond's trips.  Note that Weathership Charlie, Piz Gloria and the Strasbourg Chateau all have their own "airports".  Bond's trip from London to Tokyo on JAL was a 4-legged affair via Orly, Copenhagen and Anchorage.

 

Flight Memory also shows some statistics on Bond's flights:



Have a look at some more statistics on Bond's flights.  Unfortunately, the flight data can only be accessed by the individual user so I have provided a screenshot of the data below.  Let me know if you have any information to fill in any gaps.


See my Google map to track 007's flights plus over 850 other locations from Ian Fleming's Bond novels.

No comments:

Post a Comment