John Roughan: We wished upon a moon, but got Star

The jet age has failed to deliver. Photo / Greg Bowker

There is no better place to ponder the 40th anniversary of the moon landing than a packed airport gate lounge while you wait for a Jetstar flight. The 21st century wasn't going to be like this.

Everyone old enough to remember has a good idea of where they were that day when a man went down a ladder and stood in another world. I was at school. Classes stopped and we listened to the crackle on a transistor radio.

Well accustomed to the static by then, we could almost discern the voices of the separate astronauts and Houston mission control. We had learned their language and lore.

We had turned the radio on for every interesting point on the five-day journey. The launch, 40 years ago on Thursday, then the translunar injection that fired them out of orbit and into deep space.

Today, 40 years ago, they were on a long slingshot, precisely calculated to catch the moon's gravity and put them into lunar orbit sometime tomorrow. Once there, radio communication with the astronauts would be broken for long terrible minutes behind the moon.

Behind the moon was for me a more heady concept than standing on it. What could it be like to lose all possible sight of Earth and hang in the darkness alone in the universe?

Still, previous missions had done all this, even to the point of taking the landing module down to fly over the craters. It wasn't until that school day, 40 years ago on Monday, that they took the momentous step.

We heard it and that night we saw it on television, overexposed film of white figures bouncing on grey dirt against a black sky. Then overnight, having planted a stiff flag and pocketed some dust, they left. But not before we had a chance to look up at the night sky and see the moon without its mystery, the way human beings would always see it now.

The technology of travel seemed to offer boundless promise. The jet age had barely begun in 1969 and already we were in the space age, we thought.

By the turn of the century we'd go everywhere by air and the moon would be a spaceport for trips to Mars and beyond.

But here we are, waiting for Jetstar.

It may be unfair to measure air services by the performance of this sorry little operation that wants to educate New Zealanders in budget flying, but it illustrates the stubborn primitive state of the industry.

Who would have thought in 1969 that airlines in the 21st century would insist that passengers to turn up two hours before an international flight, or face a strict half hour curfew for domestic services.

On my first taste of Jetstar a few weeks ago I got a curt warning for arriving 25 minutes before flight time. Fortunately for me, they said, the plane was delayed - by more than an hour, it turned out. Last week it happened again.

Jetstar's strictures are causing taxis and shuttles to err on the safe side with pick-up times. Delivered to the airport with 20 minutes to spare, I joined another grumbling throng in the gate lounge and waited over an hour for the plane.

Air travel should not be like this, and it shouldn't cost a fortune not to be like this. A domestic airliner is a glorified bus; it doesn't need cabin crew to greet you, feed you, demonstrate the unique safety equipment and ensure your belt is buckled, your seat-back upright and your tray table fastened away.

All fares should be at Jetstar's level and probably would be if air travel had developed in an open market. But airlines developed as national flagships, protected and favoured by their governments, their ability to compete in other countries decided by negotiation between states.

Imagine if it had been different. Suppose airlines had been free to fly and land anywhere, offering services wherever they found a demand for them. Might the world be encircled now like a big city with transport so fast, regular and cheap that nobody needed to look at a timetable, let alone book a seat?

At the least, we could have a quiet trip without food trollies, inane cabin announcements and in-flight entertainment. We might even, without paying a premium, get some personal space that cannot be invaded by the clod in front reclining.

Air travel has not advanced since the 1960s. It is getting less comfortable, less convenient as time goes on.

Meanwhile manned space travel stopped at the moon and hasn't been back there since 1972. In 40 years we have found no earthly use for the place. But we gaze at the moon now knowing we can get there and can wonder still at the possibilities beyond.