Flight 714

Flight 714 (Vol 714 pour Sydney)
Cover of the English language edition published in the USA
Publisher	Casterman
Date	1968
Series	The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin)
Creative team
Writer(s)	Hergé
Artist(s)	Hergé
Original publication
Published in	Tintin
Language	French
ISBN
Translation
Publisher	Methuen Little, Brown/Hachette
Date	1968
Translator(s)	Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner
Chronology
Preceded by	The Castafiore Emerald, 1963
Followed by	Tintin and the Picaros, 1976

Flight 714, first published in 1968, is the 22nd and penultimate complete volume of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums by the Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. Its original French title is Vol 714 pour Sydney ("Flight 714 to Sydney"). The title refers to a flight that the heroes fail to catch, as they become involved in a plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire involving a private jet and an Indonesian island.

This album is unusual in the Tintin series for its science fiction and paranormal influences. The central mystery is essentially left unresolved.

Storyline

On a refueling stop in Jakarta, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus are on their way to Sydney when they unexpectedly meet their old friend Piotr Skut (first encountered in The Red Sea Sharks), now the chief pilot for eccentric millionaire Laszlo Carreidas. Unable to politely refuse Carreidas's offer of a lift, Tintin and his friends join the millionaire on his prototype private jet. Unbeknownst to Carreidas and the others, his secretary Spalding and two of the pilots, Boehm and Colombani, are in a plot to hijack the plane and bring it to a deserted volcanic island in the Lesser Sunda Islands. Skut, who is not involved in this plot, becomes a prisoner too. After a rough landing, while embarking from the plane, a terrified Snowy bolts from Tintin's arms and runs off. Guards shoot at him, and a horrified Tintin believes that he is killed.

To Tintin's further shock, the mastermind of the plot then reveals himself as the evil Rastapopoulos, intent on taking Carreidas' fortune. Captain Haddock's corrupt ex-shipmate, Allan, is present (as in earlier books) as Rastapopoulos's henchman.

The prisoners are bound and held in Japanese World War II-era bunkers. Rastapopoulos takes Carreidas to another World War II-era bunker where his accomplice, Dr. Krollspell, injects the millionaire with a truth serum to enable Rastapopulos to learn Carreidas's Swiss bank account number. Unfortunately for Rastapopoulos, Carreidas becomes relentlessly eager to tell the truth about his life of greed, perfidy and corruption – everything except the Swiss bank account. Furious, Rastapopulos lunges at Krollspell, who is still holding the truth-drug syringe, and is accidentally injected, becoming intoxicated. He too recounts hideous deeds in a boasting manner, and as he and Carreidas begin to quarrel over which is the more evil Rastapopoulos reveals that nearly all of the men he recruited, including Spalding, the aircraft pilots, and (the increasingly unnerved) Krollspell, are already marked to be killed.

Snowy, alive after all, helps Tintin and his friends escape and find the bunker where Carreidas is held prisoner. Tintin and Captain Haddock bind and gag Krollspell, Rastapopulos, and even the irascible Carreidas, and escort them to lower ground, intending to use Rastapopulos as a hostage. However, the serum wears off and Rastapopulos escapes as Allan detects the escaping prisoners. However, Krollspell, in fear of Rastapopoulos, throws in his lot with Tintin and Haddock; he is subsequently released and continues to accompany Tintin and Haddock, watching the still irritable Carreidas.

Rastapopoulos, freed from his bonds, sends Allan and his Sondonesian henchmen to either kill or capture the fugitives. Led by a telepathic voice Tintin is hearing, the protagonists discover a hidden entrance to a statue-filled cave. Through a large hallway they discover a temple hidden inside the island's volcano. Rastapopulos and his cohorts are not far behind, but failing to find out how to open the secret passage resort to explosives.

Penetrating deeper into the volcano, Tintin and his friends meet Mik Kanrokitoff, a writer for the magazine Space Week, who reveals to them that his is the guiding voice that they have followed, having received it into their minds via a telepathic transmitter. Kanrokitoff obtained the device from an extraterrestrial race of humanoids, who were formerly worshipped on the island as gods and who use it as a landing-point to contact Earth's people.

An earthquake and the explosion set off by Rastapopoulos and his men triggers a volcanic eruption. Despite Carreidas's unreasonable behaviour, Tintin and his party finally reach relative safety inside the volcano's crater bowl. Meanwhile, Rastapopoulos and his henchmen flee the eruption by running down the outside of the volcano and launch a rubber dinghy from Carreidas' plane.

Once Tintin and his friends find their way out of the volcano, Kanrokitoff puts them all under telepathic hypnosis and summons a flying saucer piloted by the extraterrestrials; the hypnotised group board the saucer, narrowly escaping the volcano's dramatic eruption. Kanrokitoff spots the rubber dinghy and exchanges Tintin and his companions for Allan, Spalding, Rastapopulos, and the treacherous pilots, who are whisked away in the saucer to an unknown fate. The group – including Krollspell, who is later deposited by the saucer at his institute in Cairo – awakes from hypnosis and cannot remember what happened to them when eventually rescued. Professor Calculus has a souvenir, though – a crafted rod of alloyed cobalt, iron, and nickel, which he had found in the caves and forgotten in his pocket. The cobalt is of a state that does not occur on Earth, and is the only evidence of a close encounter with its makers; only Snowy, who cannot speak, remembers the hijacking and alien abduction.

The story ends with Tintin, Carreidas and companions boarding a public airline to Australia.

Trivia

• The TV series Lost plot has similarities to the story of this comic.

• The story is cited in chapter 4 of the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.

• Writer Hugo Frey argues that Rastapopoulos' appearance was an example of post-war anti-Semitism on Hergé's part, though other writers argue against this, pointing out that Rastapoppulos is not Jewish and surrounds himself with explicitly German-looking characters: Kurt, the submarine commander of The Red Sea Sharks; Doctor Krollspell, whom Hergé himself referred to as a former concentration camp official; and Hans Boehm, the sinister-looking navigator and co-pilot, both from Flight 714.

• The statues on the island have eyes similar to the Japanese Dogū figurines.

• A use of the real Indonesian language occurs here: while on duty, two of Tintin's captors talk about a particular Indonesian dish that originated in Java, sambal rujak (ground chilli sauce with shrimp paste).

External links

• Flight 714 Official Website
• Flight 714 at Tintinologist.org

---