How pricey were Indiana Jones' transoceanic flights, and how extensive were their availability in the interwar period?

by Goat_im_Himmel

The Indiana Jones films are known for the maps with the lines and the image of the plane over it, showing as he progresses around the globe. In 'Raiders', for instance, we see him leaving the American West Coast, and taking commercial air travel across the Pacific, with a few stops along the way. I generally think of the rise of commercial air travel as a post-war thing, and know next to nothing about what existed in the 1930s.

How much would Indy be paying for his jaunts around the world?
How many options existed in that period as far as airlines? What about common routes? Or would a lot of travel be specific charter flights?

It would be fairly costly. A trip from London to Karachi cost 120 pounds in 1929 and 85 pounds in 1938. Adjusted for inflation that's some 7000 and 5300 pounds today, which understates the price as earnings have increased since then, i.e. 120 pounds is a bigger chunk out of somebody's wages back then, than 7000 is today. Note the price is only for going there, a round-trip ticket would cost nearly twice as much (there was roughly a 10% discount when booking a round trip ticket). For comparison this was a few pounds more than a first class ship journey to Karachi. For rich people long flights could therefore be attractive as a way to greatly shorten journey times to some faraway locations without paying much extra. On the other hand even first class travel on a ship was decidedly cheaper on the far longer London-Brisbane route (195 pounds by air in 1934). Note that on long routes there would be frequent stops along the way, so flight times could be surprisingly long, even in 1938 it took six days for a flight from Marseille to Saigon. That is, if everything went well, mechanical or navigational errors could greatly increase travel times on long routes. The single largest category of air travelers were business travelers, and then depending on the route it was either tourists or government employees, i.e. on colonial routes officials and officers were usually more common than tourists. Governments generally subsidized airlines, or else ticket prices would have been even higher.

There wasn't a lot of long-distance airlines to choose from in 1930 but the numbers steadily increased during the decade. PanAm, Braniff and Eastern offered flights to various destinations in the Americas. In the mid-30s Pan American expanded across the Pacific and in 1937 also set up routes to Britain and France, rapidly growing into one of the biggest international carriers of the 1930s. Imperial Airways held a monopoly on long-distance flights within the British Empire through the 1930s. Air France was formed from mergers in 1933 and flew to European, Mediterranean, South American and Indochinese destinations. Aeroflot offered services across the Soviet Union from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific. Deutsche Luft Hansa offered flights to China and Japan in 1930, and thanks to aggressive subsidies expanded across the world, even acquiring and founding domestic airlines in South America. One of these was Syndicato Condor, which first operated in Brazil and then expanded to some other South American countries, even starting flights to other continents such as the Chile-South Africa route. European countries with overseas colonies also had national carriers operating the routes to their colonies. Lesser national carriers also began offering long-distance routes, mainly across Europe and then the Americas if they had the resources to start flights to other continents. Note that airlines didn't necessarily fly their own aircraft on all the routes they offered, interline agreements with other companies were fairly common. Charter flights were also an option but would have been very costly if only a few seats were filled.

WW2 disrupted a lot of these routes, but the war also advanced air technology, offering faster, safer and larger aircraft after the war.