Handling crew a long time before people start to travel (10)
I believe the answer is:
management
'handling' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'crew a long time before people start to travel' is the wordplay.
'crew' becomes 'man' (I've seen this before**).
'a long time' becomes 'age' ('age' can be a synonym of 'long time').
'before' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'people' becomes 'men' (man is a kind of person).
'start to' indicates taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'travel' is 't'.
'man'+'age'+'men'+'t'='MANAGEMENT'
(Other definitions for management that I've seen before include "Those running company" , "The bosses" , "Top part of organisation" , "Those in control of an organisation" , "Those running an organisation" .)