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Bring Back Self Adhesive Flights

The first flights to be used with wooden stems were just paper tassels inserted into a split piece of cane. These were replaced with properly printed gummed paper flights that you licked the back of to stick them together. The main problem with paper is of course that it tears very easily and goes soggy if the darts are put onto a table wet with beer.

Feather flights with wooden stems came next for a while, which were very expensive and very easy to split with a badly placed dart. These did not stay in favour for long as they were quickly replaced with plastic flights.

  Picture By Andrew LucasThe first plastic flights were clumsy and very thick but a new lightweight self-adhesive flight was developed. As can be seen from the picture, these flights were made from a large piece of plastic with a non-setting glue on one side and then folded to produce the standard flight shape. If the flight were struck by another dart, it more often than not, would peel apart and could then be pressed back together again. Rarely did they shatter because the plastic was thin but pliable unlike the flights that have replaced them.

The only problem with the self-adhesive flights was that they were relatively expensive to make and so were superseded by the modern plastic ones. These are very cheap but a little brittle and so can shatter fairly easily. Also the constant folding of the flight will eventually crack them anyway so that they have to be replaced.

Attempts have been made to produce a more durable flight by putting a material center to the flight that is then coated with plastic. This stops them from tearing quite so easily but they are thicker than a standard flight and difficult to get into a metal shaft. Also production methods make them more expensive.

I still have a few sets of self adhesive flights and many times people have seen them and come up to me asking to buy them but they are worth their weight in gold. Eventually I will have to replace them but they are lasting well. Maybe one day we will see a longer lasting flight developed to be their equal.