Travellers' checks

Commercial flights between Hong Kong and China started 70 years ago this November and were operated by the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). Destined to be incorporated into Air China in 2004, CNAC was then owned and operated by American carrier Pan Am. The first flights were between Hong Kong and Shanghai, by way of Canton (Guangzhou), Shantou, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Wenzhou, with tiny, six-seater Douglas Dolphin amphibious planes plying the route. While most pilots were American, the flight attendants were Chinese and each was kitted out in a uniform more reminiscent of Flash Gordon than commercial air travel. But it wasn't all romance and glamour. In 1938, a CNAC DC2 that had just taken off from Kai Tak became the first airliner to be shot down by hostile fire, from Japanese fighter planes. A CNAC website is hosted in the United States by a nephew of a former CNAC pilot and contains accounts of these and other tragic incidents, many photographs of former flight attendants and those of pilots and other company employees. The site is also looking to put names to the faces of some of these, many of whom would have lived and worked in Hong Kong during the 1930s and 40s. See www.cnac.org for more.

The colour orange will be further encroaching upon the international hospitality trade in the next couple of years, with the easyHotel brand set to launch in India and the Middle East. The first easyHotel opened in London last summer, offering basic, orange-moulded plastic accommodation with minimal service for about #40 ($580) a night. The equivalent in Indian rupees buys you a night in substantial accommodation on the subcontinent, so how a no-frills hotel group will operate in what is largely a no-frills market remains to be seen. The first hotels will open in Mumbai, Madras, New Delhi and Calcutta in the next two years. EasyHotel - a sister company of budget airline easyJet - also plans to open properties in Dubai, Egypt, Oman, Lebanon, Turkey and several other Middle Eastern countries. For a look at the London and Basel hotels visit www.easyhotel.com.