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Possibly one of the more pointless questions to ask, but it's driving me nuts. Why was "Flight 714" given that title, when the adventure itself had nothing to do with Flight 714? It doesn't seem like any of the other albums had such a red herring of a title. I'm genuinely curious what calling the story that is meant to convey or do to the reader.

Not at all; I think it's an interesting question. Of course the current English translations now use the more full title Flight 714 to Sydney, making it a more direct translation of Hergé's original French title; but your point applies equally to that, if not more so.

My personal guess is that Hergé was deliberately going for an understated effect by making the title simply the bland name of the routine flight they start out on before getting sidetracked onto Carriedas's plane and plunged into all the wierdness, and the routine flight they end up back on, having had the whole adventure wiped from their memories (apart from Snowy's!)

I think Hergé was going for a sort of "just another ordinary day" effect, to contrast with the high adventure that actually happens, and to tie in with the whole idea that alien visitations may be happening all the time, almost unnoticed, just behind the routine, ordinary world. Plus it sounds like a sort of pilot's report title, very technical and clinical, of the sort you might find in a secret government file on UFO sightings.

Balthazar has some great ideas. For me, the adventure begins with a plane flight and ends with one. The title seems apt.

Yes, and none of them (except poor Snowy!) remember anything except the flight! This is actually a really interesting question...when you think about it, a few titles are like this. I think it's really great, mysterious!

When Herge was first planning the story, he called it "Flight 714" because it did involve the titular flight crash-landing on an island where the passengers and crew meet some Japanese soldiers left over from World War Two and are unaware that the conflict is over.

What would have been an alternative title? "The Pulau-Pulau Bompa Volcano" is all that springs to my imagination-deprived mind and it's quite a mouthful anyway. Any ideas?

Planning was quite far ahead by the time the story got this title; according to The Art of Hergé, Vol. 3, his development work on Les Bigotudos having stalled in 1964, he began to work on the story for what became Flight 714 (including the Japanese soldiers idea) at that point.
By 1965 the storyline included them being on a private jet owned by a billionaire (called Barclay at this time – the billionaire, that is, not the jet... ;-)), rather than being in a commercial flight to Adelaide, or Sydney, come to that...

Well his working titles were L'Archipel du Grand Secret (The Archipelago's (Big) Secret – Michael Farr omits the Big) and Vol Spécial pour Adélaïde (Special Flight to Adelaide); a pencil sketch was published showing this latter name in the December 13th 1966 issue of the Tintin magazine (and reproduced on p. 146 of The Art of Hergé, Vol. 3). The Vol 714 pour Sydney was adopted after this time, it would seem.
But there is plenty of scope for other titles – Secrets of the Saucer Men, Archipelago of the Gods, The Carreidas 160 Does Not Respond, The Eruption of Pulau-Pulau Bompa (two for the Jo, Zette and Jocko fans there!) Lords of the Volcano, Captives of Fire Island – the list is pretty well endless... I don't say they are any good, but the material is there.

However, I think the notion that the Flight 714 to Sydney title is at once both mysterious and mundane, a fairly standard sort of airport announcement rendered cryptic by lack of context, sums it up, and makes it an excellent name for the adventure.

The referencing of The 39 Steps in The Black Island shows that Hergé had a sensitivity to the works of Hitchcock, who was always famously searching for the "McGuffin" in a plot - something – a person, object or idea – to hang an adventure upon, which may have no actual significance to the story as it develops, and which may actually quickly drop out of sight. The "real" Flight 714 in the story has some of those attributes (as to a certain extent does the phrase, "The 39 Steps", which is so tangential to the drive of the plot that it was changed completely from the usage in the book to the film, where it becomes a secret organization, rather than Buchan's real flight of steps; later films have it as actual steps again, but at various locations, and for various reasons. As the plot is really an excuse for a chase, the precise meaning never really matters that much).

Hitchcock also wasn't above a great sounding title playing little or no part in the film – North by Northwest isn't a direction (as there is no such designation in navigation), it's a quote from Hamlet from a speech about madness; although a good part of the story is about traveling across America, and a Northwest airline was added to the script, the title is mostly there as a McGuffin because it sounds good. Perhaps Hergé was looking to produce the same effect?

Pity he didn't keep the name. A crooked billionaire named after an infamous high street bank seems very appropriate.


Hmmmmmm... I'm afraid these sound too much like b-movie titles. Nice beginning though. Any more suggestions?

Wouldn't that "du" make The Archipelago of the Big Secret a more literal translation? If freely adapted to less clunky English, and altering the geographical terms a little to focus in on just the one island in the story, I guess that might eventually have become something like The Island of Secrets in the English version.

Earlier in his career, when he needed the book titles to really grab the attention of new readers, I think Hergé might have been more likely to have gone with one of these more dramatic or exotic sounding titles. But with this book being later in his career, when he had a very established readership, maybe he felt more confident in going for something more deadpan and ordinary sounding. Plus that sort of cool, understated title may have become particularly fashionable in the 1960s, as in Len Deighton thrillers, etc.

Perhaps Hergé's title Coke en Stock is a similar example: a boring, innocuous phrase which, as the gang's code-phrase for their slave shipments, conceals something more sinister and is key to one of the most action-packed adventures. When translated by the UK publishers, the translators changed it to the more obviously exciting title The Red Seas Sharks. This may have been mostly because to many English speakers Coke would have sounded more like a reference to a soft drink or cocaine than to a fossil fuel; but I'd guess it may also have been because the UK publishers wanted something sounding more obviously adventurous to grab new readers who might still be unfamiliar with Tintin books.

As do The Blue Lotus, Prisoners/ Temple of the Sun, The Calculus Affair – that’s the desired effect, if you don’t – as Balthazar puts it – go for the “cool, understated title”, which Flight 714 does (with or without the to Sydney).


I’d tend to agree with you, but I was making use of Mr. Farr’s take on the books proto-name, and felt I’d transgressed enough by adding the “big”…!

That’d be The Island of Big Secrets… ;-)

True! It's just that having singularised archipelago to island and pluralised secret to secrets, I thought I might as well go really free in my hypothetical translation of a hypothetical title and (like Michael Farr) dump the "Big", on the grounds that "Big Secret" or "Big Secrets" somehow sounds a bit lame in English.


To add to my answer on the main point, I think another reason why Flight 714 stands out in tone from many of the other Tintin book titles, is that it doesn't start with a "The". Most of the other titles do, apart from the "Tintin in ..." books.

Which has just reminded me that, according to Harry Thompson's biography, Tintin in Indonesia was in the running as a possible title. He doesn't give any source for this snippet of information though.