Secrets of Royal Travel

-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 time to 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, screaming into 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 months of 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 protocol nearly 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 for the 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 traveling on 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 brought about 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 our very 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 unwritten guidelines 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 his parents 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 was Prince 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 plane flipped 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' skill as 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 were between 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 actually some 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, Barry had 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 is shaking 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 up a 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 will continue 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 with looking 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.