He's one of Tinseltown's most enduring stars, gracing the silver screen since the 1970s. Who can forget his mesmerising dance moves in Saturday Night Fever and his Hollywood comeback in Pulp Fiction?
Travolta’s devotion to acting is mirrored by a passion for aviation. He's an accomplished pilot, with license to fly 11 types of jets. There's seldom a day he isn't in the air and there are few places in the world he hasn't been. Dubai was one of them, until the end of last year. That's when I got a chance to meet him, on behalf of our monthly show CNN Business Traveller.
Dressed in his pilot gear, he walked into the interview room with an air of a Captain Travolta about him but with the boy-next-door charm of a Danny Zuko, his character from Grease.
"I can't go more than 2 or 3 weeks without, you know, going somewhere," he tells me, eyes lighting up at the mere mention of planes. "I fly almost everyday but I need to actually travel to a place, in order to be happy." Anytime Travolta wants to travel, all he has to do is step out of his front door. Literally. His Florida home has its very own landing strip. Where most people have garages for their cars, his house comes with hangars for his planes, amongst them a Boeing 707.
For work, he likes to fly to his film sets. For play, he likes to fly his family and celebrity friends around the world. Should any of them need a ride, he's more than happy to oblige. “I've flown so many, you know. Barbara Streisand and Marlon Brando and oh gosh, Muhammad Ali. Olivia Newton John, of course, who's my old friend,” he says, listing them on his fingers.
The longest he’s flown nonstop is 9 hours but it was perhaps one of his shortest flights that was most memorable. That would be the 20-minute flight between Newark Airport and Philadelphia.
“And I got it as a Christmas present from my sister," he says, recounting his first time on a plane. “It was in a glove box and I thought it was a pair of gloves. You know, I opened it up and it was a ticket. She said we're going the day after Christmas and I just went into shock. I couldn't believe we were actually going, you know. The rest is history.”
Travolta’s personal history with planes began at the age of 5. That's when he first caught the flying bug. Living under the flight path of LaGuardia Airport, he obsessed about the look and design of planes. By the time he was 15, he started taking flying lessons. His first solo flight was at 19, and first jet licence at 25.
In those early days of travel, Travolta says one airline in particular caught his attention, Qantas. It had the longest routes at the time and he was impressed by its safety record. So in 2002, he became the official Qantas ‘Ambassador-at-Large’, representing the airline for publicity events around the world.
His Dubai trip was one of them. Unlike many of his other trips, he actually came on this one as a passenger. As such an avid pilot, I wondered if it was hard for him to relax. Was he itching to get into the cockpit and fly the A380 superjumbo that flew him to Dubai?
“You know, I fly so much that honestly, sometimes I'm itching to be a passenger,” he grins, reclining in his seat. “I fly over 300 hours a year. And once in a while you just want to, you know, luxuriate.”
