Original subtitles

♪♪

-From the earliest days of flight,

the royal family have taken to the skies.

-The royals and flying has been a great love affair.

-The plane it has opened up the whole world to them.

-When they go abroad, they are ambassadors for Britain.

-Their favorite way to travel for over 100 years,

the royals have loved to fly in style.

-This is how the other half live.

No airport queuing for them.

-And behind every journey, whether by private jet,

chartered plane, commercial aircraft, or helicopter,

there has been an extraordinary team

tasked with looking after our monarchs on the move.

-And salute the passenger once they get off the aircraft.

-We lift the curtain

on five-star regal luxury in the cloud.

-Only the best pilots were allowed to fly

for the Royal Flight.

-It was like no other travel.

-We buckle up for some turbulent times

and tell the story of a royal love affair

that shows no sign of abating.

-It really was quite something. It was luxury.

-Join us as we take to the air with the royals.

-Best thing since bubble gum.

♪♪

-The British royal family

are the most well-traveled monarchy in history.

[ Cheers and applause ]

From a young queen jetting around the globe

for the very first timeto the next generation of royals

taking the Windsor brand worldwide,

plane travel has defined a family

that's constantly on the move.

-Flight revolutionized Queen Elizabeth's role.

I calculated it.

She's been 'round the world 42 times,

and that's quite some air miles.

♪♪

-The royal wheels have hit the tarmac

in over 100 different countries,

and from the moment the cabin doors open,

the pomp and splendor of a grand royal arrival begins.

[ All chanting ]

-It is theater.

Everybody's there, everybody's positioned,

the red carpet is looking perfect,

they look perfect, everybody feels important,

and it makes the royal family

look very, very special, as well.

-After all, it is kind of pageantry.

It is almost a show that they are putting on.

[ Cheers and applause ]

So that grand entrance is very, very important.

-Long live the Queen.

The rulers of our land meet to welcome the new queen.

♪♪

-The only person in the British Isles

who doesn't need a passport,

the queen is the matriarch of a family firm

who've got flying honed to a fine art.

♪♪

-Obviously, when we go to the airport,

especially when it's hand luggage only,

we're trying to cram all our toiletries

into that plastic bag.

It's never big enough.

No, the royals don't have to worry about anything like that.

I've been on a plane with Kate and William

where all Kate's dresses

had their own seat to make sure they were kept flat.

They are not gonna be shoved into the holds

just to be squashed by everyone else's.

-Kate's excess luggage continues a proud royal tradition.

For her 44,000-mile commonwealth tour in 1953,

the queen's luggage alone weighed 12 tons.

During her lifetime, her majesty has indeed clocked up

an impressive amount of hours spent airborne,

traveling over 1 million miles.

-Canberra is the first top on her 80th birthday

whistle stop-tour.

It's two countries, four cities in eight days.

-But in the hubbub of modern air travel,

how do you provide a service that's fit for a Queen?

Well, it all starts before the plane has even left the ground.

-At Heathrow Airport, which is where

all the royals travel from, there's the Windsor Suite.

-Tucked behind an unmarked door in the corner of Terminal 5

and complete with polished marble floors

and a bomb-proof glass roof,

the Windsor Suite is where the royal family kick back

before takeoff.

-It's basically like a posh hotel lounge

where they just turn up about 40 minutes,

an hour before, if that.

Sometimes Harry, in particular,

has literally turned up half an hour

before a flight, screaminginto the Windsor Suite, "Quick!"

No airport queuing for them.

♪♪

-Which is lucky, as most of the crew

would be made up of their own staff.

Depending on the occasion,

the Queen's traveling entourage can run up to 34 people.

-The entourage varies from royal to royal.

-It's this juggernaut. It's a royal juggernaut.

-The Prince of Wales, certainly when I was there,

always had an artist accompanying.

-Private secretary or maybe two private secretaries.

-Charles will have, say, three valets working with him.

-A couple or orderlies or you'd have a hairdresser.

-They do travel with a surgeon.

Invariably, it's a Royal Naval surgeon commander.

-And then you might have a couple of tour managers.

So, yeah...

-But our modern monarchs aren't the first

to use luxury air travel

as a way to live in the royal fast lane.

It all began with Edward VIII, the first head of state to fall

under the spell of this dazzling way to travel.

-When Edward came to the throne, he was the first in the world

ever to have an aircraft unit for the head of state.

-Not even America, not even the American president

had its own plane at this stage.

So it was groundbreaking in its own way.

-It was modern. It was thrusting.

It was forward. It was amazing.

Going about in a plane --it makes him terribly glamorous.

-You know, air travel was the coming thing,

and he put it on the map.

-But all this was just the beginning for a family

who would go on to become trailblazers in the sky.

♪♪

Our royals like to travel in style.

Queen Elizabeth II is officially the most widely traveled

head of state in history, and her uncle Edward VIII

was the first member of the family

to have his own private royal plane.

But under her father, George VI, with the arrival of war,

the Royal Flight was to become far more

than just a glamorous perk to the job.

[ Air-raid siren blaring ]

-In the war, everything changed.

What had once been rather an indulgence for the king

now became a key part of the war effort.

-The most important role that King's Flight would have

would be to remove the king out of the U.K.

to a place of safety.

-But George had other plans.

With 1 1/2 million British men conscripted to the armed forces

in the first three monthsof the war alone, as their king,

George felt his place was on the front line.

And his personal air force

offered the perfect means of transportation.

-Regardless of his own safety, George was adamant that he was

going to use the plane, go and see his troops,

and the government was always saying to him,

"It's too dangerous.

You'll get captured. You could get killed.

You'll get injured. It's simply not safe."

But he was absolutely insistent.

-And all those flights were made with tremendous secrecy.

They were launched from airfields under dark.

No one would see them doing it.

There was no advance warning

so nobody would know where they were going.

-Even the Allied Forces were not to be trusted

with the details of the Royal Flight.

-There was one occasion when the king

was on the King's Flight heading out to see the troops,

and, actually, the Royal Navy didn't recognize the airplanes.

And so a shot was sent up towards the King's Flight

because they thought perhaps it was an enemy aircraft.

-To protect its majestic royal cargo,

the King's Flight invested in its own armed aircrafts.

But a quirk of royal protocolnearly rendered half the wartime

king's defenses useless.

-There was a problem with the rear guns,

'cause they were actually inside the royal cabin,

and the royal household would not allow an RAF engineer

into that royal cabin in order to fire the guns.

Eventually, it was agreed

that the steward would be allowed.

Now, the steward wasn't even a member of the forces.

He was actually a footman from Buckingham Palace.

Those guns were never fired in anger during the war,

which was probably just as well

when you asked the steward to fire them.

-The king paid a visit to a fighter station

where pilots were taking off

for a daylight sweep over occupied France.

-Throughout the war, George traveled extensively by plane,

from secret meetings in Algiers

to visiting his troops in France and North Africa.

But soon, the RAF needed all the help it could get,

and by 1942, the king had to give up

his beloved squadron of planes for the war effort.

-The King's Flight had this

very, very important part of the operations,

and what the squadron was doing was dropping supplies

and dropping agents all over occupied Europe.

So that, I think, is completely marvelous.

[ Fanfare ]

-When peace was finally declared,

the Royal Flight could return

to servicing the demands of the king and his family.

But life in the air was changing fast.

Airlines had upped the ante on their technology.

-The Royal Flight would have been operating

relatively old airplanes,

but, very quickly, developments were afoot.

-In 1949, the de Havilland Comet,

manufactured on home turf here in Hertfordshire,

took to the air.

The jet engine had arrived,

and if the royal family wanted in on the action,

they would have to go commercial.

-Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

We're now at cruising altitude, 35,000 feet.

-The Comet had it's greatest and biggest advertisement in 1951

with a VIP flight, and the VIP flight featured

the three biggest VIPs you could get --

the Queen, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret.

All three of them went up in the plane together.

How amazing is that?

If it's safe enough forthe queen and her two daughters,

including the heir to the throne,

safe enough for them, it's safe enough for everybody.

♪♪

-Elizabeth, her mother, and Princess Margaret

were guests of Sir Geoffrey and Lady de Havilland

and became the first members of the British royal family

to fly by jet.

Around 50% faster than piston-engine aircraft,

a nine-stop London-to-Tokyo by Comet

would now take 36 hours, compared to 86 hours.

60 years on, one of the few remaining

Comets in the world

now takes pride of place at the de Havilland Museum.

-This is the aircraft that really brought in the age

of luxury passenger air travel.

If you were travelingon an airliner before the Comets

came in, you were basically traveling on a World War II

converted bomber.

They were just not a very pleasant way

of traveling around.

The Comet changed all that, revolutionized air travel.

-It was an incredible moment of British pride

to have made the first airliner, beaten America.

We've beaten the rest of the world.

Our manufacturing was the best.

-Large picture-window views

and tables gave a feel of comfort.

It had a galley that could serve hot food.

Passengers dined on five-course gourmet meals

before freshening up in private sit-down dressing rooms.

It was luxury in the sky.

-It was fast. It flew high. It was luxurious.

It was comfortable. Above all, it was smooth.

It really was the Concord of it's day.

-Suddenly, being up in a plane was something to enjoy

rather than endure, a lavish dinner party in the air.

And much to the delight of Princess Margaret...

-Ashtrays fitted as standard, of course.

Well, this was the 1950s.

-But de Havilland's success was dramatically short-lived.

-This is the tragic scene

of the current disaster

near Calcutta.

-Soon after entering commercial airline service,

three devastating accidents killed everyone on board

when the planes inexplicably exploded mid-flight.

Buckingham Palace was furious

that the Queen, the heir to the throne,

and her sister were put in such danger.

-What really broughtabout the downfall of the Comets

was the square windows, because they were built

as lovely picture windows for the passengers to see out of,

but the problem with square windows -- they have corners,

and it was the corners that concentrate the stress.

And that's what led to the structural failure

of the entire aircraft.

-Although the de Havilland Comet was redesigned,

the windows were improved, it was too late.

By this point, people had lost confidence in British

manufacturing of airplanes, and the actual confidence

had moved to America.

-The British aviation industry was hit hard,

but for Elizabeth, this jet-powered revolution

had opened up a whole new world of global travel.

In 1952, she set off with Philip

on a flight from Heathrow to Kenya.

She was seen off by the king,

too ill to make the tour himself.

Soon after they arrived, the couple enjoyed

a brief respite from the hectic royal schedule

at an exclusive hotel in the heart of the Kenyan forest.

They were blissfully unaware of the storm

that was about to break.

-It was in Kenya, at the royal hunting lodge,

that the news of the king's death reached his daughter.

-They'd been in the Treetops Hotel,

which basically meant looking down onto animals

in the watering hole, and then her father had died.

The Queen was the first monarch in modern history

to not be in her country when she was proclaimed Queen.

-Elizabeth had arrived in Kenya a princess.

Just six days later, she would be flying back a queen.

But when she landed, the assembled dignitaries,

including the prime minister, Winston Churchill,

would have to wait.

-At the time, her luggage and clothing

was for a royal tour of Africa,

so she wasn't suitably attired to leave the aircraft.

So special mourning outfits

were brought to the aircraft for her to wear

before she came down the steps for the press

and the media to see her clearly very upset.

-This extraordinary milestone in royal history

would change protocol for the family forever.

The Queen currently travels

with at least three outfit changes a day,

but an all-black ensemble for the purposes of mourning

is always included, too, just in case.

The King's Flight no more,

Elizabeth's maiden voyage

would mark the beginning of a near-70-year reign defined

by air travel.

-The plane has made Elizabeth our most-traveled monarch

in history.

She sees the commonwealth

as one of her most enjoying legacies,

so visiting it frequently -- that's very important.

-Back in 1953, when her majesty started,

they did 60 Royal Flights in the year.

By 1985, with one extra aircraft, we were doing 1,200.

♪♪

-The 1980s saw falling prices in flying for everyone.

It was the birth of package holidays

and increased competition.

Both Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair first took to the skies.

It also marked the maiden voyage of a plane that the royals

would get to know very well over the next decade.

Tucked away at a museum in Hertfordshire

is a veritable royal workhorse, the 146.

-Wow. So, this is the 146.

Not quite the same setup and configuration

as the Queen's Flight aircraft, but, nonetheless, a 146.

-For air steward Dave Wright, who accompanied the family

on over 750 Royal Flights across the globe,

this is like returning home.

-The senior principals, or the senior royal traveling,

would always sit in the same seat.

So, literally come up the stairs at the back of the aircraft,

turn left.

That seat was a principal passenger seat.

-Dave had to deliver the highest standard of cabin service,

but with only the same space

to operate as any other commercial jet.

-So, this is where I'd be predominantly employed.

There would be stowages for trolleys.

Obviously, the ovens and a grill set up.

Refrigeration. And, obviously, the sink.

And then, the drawers down the side

there would be full of silver, china, and crockery

for use in the cabin service.

-Service on most commercial flights is delivered

by a team of cabin crew.

On the Royal Flight,

it was all down to Dave as the lone steward.

Monogrammed tableware would be polished to perfection,

and drinks served in sparkling crystal glasses.

And Dave had to be ready to meet the individual needs

of every royal under his watch.

-So, Prince of Wales, very much into his organic food.

A lot of the time, his food would arrive in containers.

Once his chef has provided it in those containers,

you can't then decant it into anything else

and make it look as good as what it already is.

So, invariably, his royal highness, the Prince of Wales,

would have his try and would have his lunch served

in Tupperware containers.

Very nice.

-This was the royals's 146,

specially modified to meet their demands.

It was down to the staff and family

to give it some of those creature comforts.

-As far as the royal family are concerned, they come up

the steps into something which is effectively home.

-On a royal tour, the Princess of Wales, for example,

would get changed from what she was wearing

to something a little bit more relaxed.

-Some of them brought their own slippers.

One female member of the family brought her favorite shawl,

so she used to sit and wear that when she was flying.

-The task of keeping the royals soaring through the skies

has been described as the best flying job in the RAF.

-I flew the Prince of Wales primarily,

and we got on first-name terms.

He would call me Bob, and I would call him

"Your royal highness."

-And it's all well and good flying a well-behaved

Prince Charles or Duke of Edinburgh,

but two boys under 10 were a very different story.

-We had the delight of flying the young Prince William

and Prince Harry, and, of course, like all youngsters,

they were all over the aircraft.

-The boys knew where the sweets were kept,

and they would fill their pockets full of sweets.

You could see their pockets were bulging.

-And more often than not, the air staff were contending

with friends of the four-legged kind, too.

-Occasionally, as well as ourvery important royal passengers,

we might have some very important royal dogs.

The household member of staff

would be seen taking the dogs to the grass

and pleading with the dogs to please do their business

before they went on board the airplane.

And I'm delighted to say, we never had one accident.

-We're a nation that loves to fly, with up to 9,000 planes

taking to the skies from the U.K. every day.

But if one of those planes happens

to be carrying a member of the British royalty,

then it will be operating with a set of protocols

quite unlike any other flight in the world.

From the rituals and customs that are expected...

-There's obvious things.

You don't speak to the queen until you're spoken to.

You don't touch the queen.

-...to the dangers and risks of the unexpected.

-There was a convention brought in,

really after the advent of commercial air travel,

that the monarch and the heir to the throne or two heirs

to the throne really would not travel

together on the same means of transport,

for safety reasons.

-And this is not the only protocol

that anticipates a bumpy ride ahead.

Alongside their 30 bags of luggage,

the queen and Prince Charles

always fly with their own personal bags of blood.

-It's a safeguard, because in certain parts of the world,

there's never a guarantee that, "A,"

the type of blood is gonna be available

and, if it is available, whether it is clean.

-There are even unwrittenguidelines on clothing etiquette

when flying.

-The Queen apparently likes female members

of the family to wear tights.

-They really have to look perfect,

as if they were on the front cover of Vogue,

and that's how they consider things.

-In fact, Queen Elizabeth's own skirts are weighted in the hem

so that they don't blow up as she descends at her

next important engagement.

But perhaps lesser-known protocol

was the ban on a young Charles at the departure lounge.

-Charles came to Heathrow to wave goodbye to them,

and a photographer caught Prince Charles crying,

waving and crying.

He didn't want to see hisparents go away for five months.

It appeared on a newspaper the following day about --

I think it was called "Your royal cryness."

And after that, he was banned from ever going

to see his family off again at any airport,

and there was no public display,

because that's not what the royals are about.

♪♪

-But it wouldn't be too long before Charles

embraced aviation.

Just a few years after his unfortunate airport incident,

after a course of RAF-issue flying lessons,

not only was the young Prince taking to the sky himself,

but he made it clear

that the royals don't always want to be passengers.

-The current royal family have encompassed

and embraced aviation tremendously.

The Duke of Edinburgh learned to fly back in 1952,

and he's been a keen pilot for very, very many years.

And then, following that,

the whole family took it on board.

-Part of the attraction of air travel must be the risk.

You know, it's a sense of adventure.

You know, I suspect they quite like the thrill

of putting their life on the line.

But there might also be a deeper psychological reason

why they're attracted to flight,

because they live most of their life

in a gilded cage.

You know, their life is regimented.

So when they go up in the air, they're almost free.

You know, they're literally spreading their wings.

-In fact, aside from Prince Charles

and his father, Prince Philip,

both William and Harry excelled in their military careers.

And even after leaving the forces,

Prince William still used his aeronautical skills for good.

-Okay. It looks like it might be, guys,

so let the...

-Prince William, Flight Lieutenant Wales

after he left the air force,

continued his flying career

and flew SE rescue and ambulance helicopters in Cambridgeshire

for a number of years and, during that time,

was a very,very popular member of the crew.

-I'm told people around East Anglia

were trying to fall off roads

to break their legs with the hope that Prince William

would come and pick them up,

but I'm not sure it's true.

-But being a royal doesn't protect you

from the dangers in the sky.

-A number of royals have actually died in air crashes.

The most famous of this wasPrince George, the Duke of Kent,

who died in 1942 when the plane

that he was flying to Iceland in hit a mountain in Scotland.

And then later, in 1972,

Prince William of Gloucester took part in an air show

near Wolverhampton.

Unfortunately, his two-man planeflipped over, and he was killed.

So there is a list of casualties to air transport

for the royal family.

-In 1994, it was when Charles took over the controls

that disaster struck.

-The Prince of Wales had a narrow escape

when a jet he was piloting burst

a tire as it landed and slid off the runway.

-Unfortunately, Prince Charles was involved in an accident

with a Royal Flight, BAE 146 aircraft, in Scotland.

-Prince Charles had taken over the aircraft's controls,

as he often does on such occasions.

-The royal plane dramatically overshot the runway at Islay

in the Inner Hebrides.

-The nose wheel had landed because it was right

beneath us, so we were bumping along the runway,

but what we didn't realize was, the main wheels

were still slightly clear of the ground.

So, consequently, when I took over,

I still couldn't stop it going off the end.

-It was a very unfortunate incident.

-The damage was well in excess of £1,000,000.

But then, to be fair, any aircraft accident

is always expensive.

-Although no one was hurt,

as the Royal Flight captain on board,

Graham Laurie took full responsibility.

-With hindsight, of course, which is a wonderful thing,

I should have got him to overshoot

and make another approach,but I actually told him to land,

so he did exactly what he was told to do.

-A year after the crash, Charles gave up his license

to fly for good.

But the Prince of Wales' skillas a pilot isn't the only danger

the royals face whenever they're on the move.

-Security is always taking into consideration

of where they travel to and how they travel to get there.

-A majority of the transports that they travel in

is armor-plated, it's bullet-proofed,

and it's bomb-proofed nowadays, as well.

They almost are sealed in a capsule of safety.

-Both British and Zambian security officials

know that the queen is most vulnerable when she's up there,

when she's flying across the country.

-The reality is, is that on royal travel,

security is probably the number-one aspect

that they look at, before even comfort or reliability.

-In the '80s and '90s, the royals were in

the full glare of the world's media unlike ever before.

And so once the cabin doors were closed,

flying off at a brief moment of respite,

the royal plane needed to provide

all the comforts of home.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-The only thing the queen really insists on having

wherever she is is Malvern water.

She likes Malvern water. It's refreshing.

And they usually take lots of it with her.

-She loves afternoon tea. It's her favorite meal.

And she only drinks Earl Grey,

so if you were the chef on board the royal plane,

you would definitely make sure that you had

an entire supply of Earl Grey -- not just on the plane journey

but wherever you were going on tour.

She particularly likes egg-and-cress sandwiches,

cut in particular ways.

And for supper, she always likes to start with smoked salmon.

-And having had to adjust to spending such an extraordinary

long time up in the air,

throughout her long reign, Queen Elizabeth II

has sworn by a secret weapon

to help keep the royal body clock in sync.

-Barley sugar, actually.

Apparently, she says that she thinks that

it can help with the jet lag, as well,

which is an interesting one.

I hadn't heard that one before.

-The on-flight team knew the best way

to help our sovereigns unwind

after a long day of taxing public engagements.

-The Queen invariably would have a Dubonnet for a drink.

-There's a apocryphal stories that Charles likes

to take a pre-shaken martini

with him in a special shaker

that a valet can, you know, pour for him

when he clicks his fingers.

-He offered me one once.

He insisted, and you don't say no

to the Prince of Wales.

And his mixture is putting a bit of vermouth

into the glass, swilling it 'round, and chucking it out,

and then filling the glass up with gin.

I thought it was pretty revolting,

and when he wasn't looking, I chucked it over a Yucca.

Don't know whether the Yucca's still alive.

It might have died.

-However, when traveling

to the more obscure corners of the world,

for the Queen's Flight,a lack of royal-quality catering

could mean serving up a surprising specialty.

-Quite frankly, when you were really out in the sticks

and there wasn't much to be had,

then if you could get something

that was canned, like a Fray Bentos pie,

they would take that.

-And do you know, they used to love it,

I think it's such a lovely change

from all that fancy food that comes first class.

-Mm, I won't say they necessarily like them,

but it was something.

It was better than nothing.

-With up to 30 appointments a week that could be anywhere

from Carlisle to Cuba,

the key for the dutiful onboard team

was to ensure that the royals were disturbed

as little possible.

-Whenever we were flying, we never used the P.A.,

the Tannoy system of the airplane,

because it was thought

that it might interrupt a very important meeting.

-So instead of using the Tannoy, before every trip,

navigator Bob Shields and his team

would painstakingly write out descriptions of the route,

weather, and timetable on one of these blue cards.

But even expert weather forecasters

couldn't always predict what lay ahead.

-On one particular overseas tour,

we were flying with the Princess of Wales

and we were in Brazil to visit

an airfield called Cataratas.

We had left Rio in bright sunshine,

beautiful weather, and according to the weather office there,

it was gonna be like that all day.

So I had sent back one of my blue cards

and I had written it was gonna be a fine, sunny day.

Unfortunately, on the way back from Cataratas, the weather

started to change and change very rapidly.

-We were heading into rotten weather.

When I say "rotten weather,"

I mean rotten with a capital "R,"

and every other letter is capital.

It was chucking it down with rain.

I mean, it was so bad, you could hardly see.

We dropped 10,000 feet. We just dropped.

-But Bob and his team were able to get the royal flight back

in one piece,

unlike the shattered nerves of it's passengers.

-And this is the actual card that I completed the day

after we had the bad weather.

And then her royal highness, the Princess of Wales --

she sent it back to me with the little comment

that you can see right down at the bottom there.

She had just written "B"....."S,"

which was indicative of her royal highness

and her sense of humor.

[ Laughs ]

-Just coming out now.

The Princess of Wales and the Prince of Wales

climb aboard the Andover, the Queen's Flight.

♪♪

-From the engineers up to the pilots,

the Princess of Wales was hugely popular

with the team behind the Queen's Flight.

Joining the royal family when aviation was in its heyday,

she'd quickly become one of the flight's most frequent fliers,

adding some much-needed glamour

on every royal journey she took.

-It's a 10-day tour, which promises to be

one of the busiest ever for the Prince

and Princess of Wales.

-So, on the 31st of August 1997, no one was prepared

when a distressing emergency broadcast hit the headlines.

-Just to confirm the news that Diana Princess of Wales

has died in a car accident in Paris,

which also killed her companion, Dodi Fayed.

-It was a shock.

I mean, I'd flown her over 200 times,

and, you know, she was a regular passenger.

-Graham Laurie was the pilot on duty the morning

of her fatal accident.

It was his job to fly

Prince Charles out to France to collect her body.

-If anyone had to do the trip, I was glad I was able to do it.

We were using the French Air Force base

Villacoublay just on the outskirts of Paris.

Everyone involved was being so helpful.

They would say,

"Please pass on our condolences to the Prince of Wales."

-Across the county, a shell-shocked public

woke up unable to comprehend the tragic news.

-So it was with the reluctance,

a struggle, and a sense of helplessness

that yesterday's truth dawned irrefutable.

Today's ordeal was acceptance.

-And Graham was in the eye of the storm.

-When we left Northolt at 10:00 in the morning,

there were 47 people.

When we came back, there werebetween 400 and 600 press alone,

and it made you realize

just what a major thing it was for the world.

-Watched by half-a-billion people across the globe,

the coffin of "The People's Princess"

was carried out of the aircraft,

covered with the Royal Standard.

And within 20 minutes, Graham was back in the air,

flying the Prince up to Balmoral to be with his young sons.

-When we landed at Aberdeen,I was doing the shutdown checks,

and I then heard over the intercom

"The Prince is coming forward."

Now, his royal highness came up front,

and, apparently, we spoke for about four minutes,

but I honestly don't remember a single thing

about that conversation.

I think we'd landed, and as far as I was concerned,

a fairly traumatic day was over, and I just sunk down.

Quite a day.

♪♪

-For many regal journeys, the stately private jet

was the royal family's obvious transport of choice

but flying fixed-wing is not a royal's only option.

♪♪

They're also partial to a trip in a cheeky chopper.

In fact, having had their own from the late 1950s,

our monarchy were actuallysome of the first in the country

to adopt this rather wobbly way to fly,

even when they weren't traveling in it themselves.

-The royal family were very early uses of helicopters.

While they were staying up in Balmoral,

the mail could be delivered by helicopter on a daily basis.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

-Easy, speedy, and perfect for short domestic trips

anywhere around the U.K.,

for many years, the Windsors relied

on the bespoke royal Wessex of the Queen's Flight.

Princess Diana was an early fan.

-Diana would visit North Sea oil platforms, and the helicopter

would actually land directly on the platform,

she would make her visit,

and then be flown back to Balmoral

or wherever her starting point was.

-The smiling Princess arrived

in what everybody's wearing this season out here,

steel-toe-capped boots and a rubberized survival suit.

♪♪

-One of the first helicopters used regularly by the family

now resides in London's RAF Museum.

-There's the old girl, exactly as I remember her 33 years ago.

-Barry Kelly spent many years serving as an engineer

across all aircrafts in the Queen's Flight,

but he always had a soft spot

for the specially fitted royal helicopters.

-A normal Wessex has none of this.

There's lots of whirring and noises and hydraulic oil

dripping on everybody.

It's not a very pleasant place to be.

But these aircraft -- they're sound-proofed,

they've got carpets,

they've got velour on the walls,

and it's really quite comfortable.

-Despite the luxury, there was very little space inside.

Once they had departed, Barryhad to shed his role of engineer

and become the onboard steward instead.

-In here, you'd have cups and saucers and crystal glasses,

and in the lower portion of the catering box it was called,

you'd have your flasks and a little work surface here.

So, literally, you'd get a cup out,

make a cup of tea, close it all back up again.

Not very easy at about 90 miles an hour, 1,200 feet

while this thing isshaking around like a mad thing.

On one instance, we were flying

a very senior member of the royal family.

He asked me if -- could he have an egg sandwich?

And I said, "Of course, Sir."

So stand up, walked up to the table.

There were papers all over the desk.

And he said, "Put it on the end."

I said, "Well, it's gonna fall off."

He said, "No, just put it on the end."

"Okay, Sir."

And sat back down here and just watched it from here

going flop on the floor.

His royal highness went, "Oh."

He said, "Have you got another one?"

I said "Of course I have, Sir."

I gave another one and put it in the middle

of the table this time.

I mean, it was hilarious.

♪♪

It was my duty to open the cabin door, climb out.

Extend this handle and that handle,

lower the step for the passenger to leave the aircraft,

and basically perform the protocol

and salute the passenger once they got off the aircraft.

-Lavish helicopters like the Wessex

are no longer in royal service,

but the monarchy still depend on the speedy chopper

to get them from "A" to "B."

-To do short journeys,

the helicopter is a far more effective tool

and will get people to places much quicker

and much more comfortably.

Modern helicopters, and particularly those used

by the royal family, are state of the art.

-But the royal family's options for traveling internationally

have significantly changed.

After a government investigation into the costs

of maintaining an elite, private air force,

in 1995, the Queen's Flight as we know it

was disbanded and absorbed

into another regiment in the RAF.

This question of how much the royals spend

jetting around the world

is still very much in the public eye today.

-Royal travel has often been described

as the Achilles' heel of the royal family,

because it takes upa sizable element of the budget.

It's about £5,000,000 out of a total budget of £50,000,000.

-One of the few royal expenses that we do get to see

are the royal transport expenses,

when the royal is traveling on official business,

because those are paid by the Foreign Office.

So when it comes to royal expenses,

those are often the ones the most scrutinized

because people look through them and say

"But look, why are these royals taking a private jet to France?

Why don't they go on first class on a normal flight

or why don't they go first class in the Eurostar?"

So, actually, the royal travel

is one we have a particularly unique insight into now.

-Having a plane is the ultimate wealth signifier,

and, in a sense, it is a plaything of the rich.

So if you're relatively wealthy, you know,

you want a plush --

When you're young, you want a nice, plush sports car.

If you're very wealthy, you want a plane,

So, in a sense, it is -- There might be an element of

boys with toys to it.

-Thankfully, the younger generation of royals

are much more media savvy,

as well as being attuned to public opinion.

Both princes William and Harry are more than happy

to fly economy, just as long as no one notices.

-Harry and Meghan -- they're two of the most famous people

in the world.

They went to Norway in the early stages of their relationship

It was Norwegian Air.

No one on that plane knew that Harry and Meghan were on,

because the whole plane had boarded.

They were driven to the back step.

They walked up. They had baseball caps on.

Snuck into the back seats of the aircraft.

No one even knew they were there.

-And physical disguises aren't the only method they use

to remain anonymous.

-Kate and William, on their 2014 tour to Australia,

traveled under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

And Prince George, who was 8, 9 months at the time,

was Baby Jones.

-The princes are probably two of the most down-to-earth

members of the royal family that can exist,

so for them to go and use a budget airline

to get somewhere quickly

recognizes a certain sense of responsibility.

Why not? Good for them.

-And with the modern royals more than ever

traveling the world to promote the British global brand,

this trend may be set to continue.

-I think that for their public duties, the younger royals

will definitely continue to travel commercially,

because it is more cost-effective.

And then, normally what happens is,

they will get an upgrade into first class.

-They also charter privately owned aircraft

for European trips.

Aircraft are available from the Royal Air Force,

but I think the future for long-distance traveling

is that the royal family willcontinue to use state-of-the-art

commercial aircraft, in the ultimate luxury.

-But even in a world where, for the royals,

every mode of transport now goes,

a special place will always be reserved

for the memory of the days when our monarchy

broke the forefront of private air travel...

-I think almost everybody that was on the Queen's Flight

thought it was a magnificent job.

-...when being trusted withlooking after a royal in the air

was an honor no one could ever forget...

-I look back now and think how lucky

I was to be one of those people.

-...and a handpicked team of the RAF's very best were tasked

with keeping them safe.

-I actually served 38 years in the air force,

and my time on the Queen's Flight

was the highlight of my career.

-This was the incredible legacy of 100 years of royal aviation.

-And, quite frankly, when you're on Queen's Flight,

it really was quite something.

It was luxury. Best thing since bubble gum.

♪♪

-To order this program on DVD, visit ShopPBS

or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪♪

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