As Henry Kissinger planned his secret trip to China in 1971, airport officials in Beijing were concerned. Kissinger would be arriving on a Boeing 707 operated by Pakistan International Airlines. To conceal the fact that he was going to China, Kissinger had feigned illness while on a trip to Pakistan, which explained his absence from official functions there. For extra security he traveled from Islamabad to Beijing not in an American-government aircraft but one from PIA, which had operated scheduled service to China since the mid-1960s. At the time, the 707 was one of the most recognizable aircraft in the world. It was the airplane that more than any other had made jet age intercontinental travel feasible in the 1960s. An Air Force version of the 707 also served in those days as Air Force One, as it had during one mission that commanded attention around the world: bringing John F. Kennedy’s body back from Dallas in 1963.1 But 707s did not normally fly into the People’s Republic of China.
