We've come a long way since the first package holiday

It was 75 years ago this week that Russian émigré Vladimir Raitz tempted Britons to take to the skies for an exotic getaway. And despite the outdoor toilets, army surplus tents and bar made of bamboo canes, his travel booking revolution is still going strong today

- By Rob Crossan

IF YOU'D looked up to the skies over London 75 years ago yesterday, you might have caught a glimpse of a belching, humming, rattling Dakota DC-3 chugging with intent through the thin, spring clouds.

It wouldn’t have caused much interest at the time. The Second World War had been over for barely five years and, for most Londoners, life was an austere one; dominated by bomb sites and ration coupons.

Yet the plane that was in the early stages of a six-hour flight to the Mediterranean wasn’t on a governmental or militarily assigned mission. On board were 11 students and teachers. They were the unwitting pioneers of an industry that’s now as British as tea pots and The Archers. Though, ironically, it was exactly these things that these travellers were trying, at least temporarily, to get away from.

Taking to the skies that morning were the very first British holidaymakers on a package break. With exceptional irony, given the domestic situation in his homeland, this burst of air-borne freedom was all the brainchild of a Russian émigré, Vladimir Raitz.

1950 was the first year that the number of British people taking their summer holidays overseas passed the one million mark. Yet this still accounted for a miniscule fraction of the population. While tour operators such as Thomas Cook had been in business since 1841 and the Polytechnic Touring Association of London organised a holiday to Basel, Switzerland, in 1932 (considered to be the first charter flight), holidays, as they were then seldom called, were still almost entirely the preserve of the upper classes.

It was Raitz who first had the idea of shuttling planes to and from a specific destination several times a week during the summer months and offering customers the opportunity to book both flights and accommodation in one payment.