The term “coach“ originated in a small town in Hungary called Kocs. Here a new type of cart was invented around 1500. It was successful because it had improved suspension and almost immediately found its way across the roads in Europe and into different languages: in German translation it was called “Kutsche“ in French and Spanish translation ”coche.“ Originally coaches were only for the wealthy.
However, with the arrival of mass transportation the word went down market. In the United States, the poor railway carriages, i.e. the ones without any sleeping compartments, were called ‘coaches,’ and then there were single-decker buses in England used for public transportation that went by the same name.
Flying coach was first mentioned in 1949, when a differentiation was made between full-service passengers and those flying coach in the Travel News published by the American Association of Travel Agents.
