Last weekend, I was invited on a golf trip by a friend. Just a few days away at the end of the summer. What could be lovelier? My spirits were high when we landed in Lisbon only an hour late – par for the course, so to speak, on a busy day in the skies – and I made my way to the outsize baggage conveyor to pick up my golf clubs. An hour later, they still hadn’t arrived, and I was forced to admit to myself that, however long I waited at the conveyor, my clubs, sadly, wouldn’t be joining me for the weekend.
It turned out they hadn’t been loaded on the plane at Heathrow but, somewhat miraculously and before I was ready to curse my ill fortune with tears of exasperation, British Airways located them, sent them on a later flight, and we were reunited in time for me to play 99 holes of golf in three days. How blessed I had been by this extraordinary turn of events.
My next communication with British Airways was rather less satisfactory. The night before we were due to fly back, we got an email telling us that our flights had been cancelled due to the air traffic chaos, and we had been rebooked on an alternative flight. But three days later! My friend, who is a captain of industry and had important meetings planned, was apoplectic about the casual nature of this missive, but he’s also resourceful, and we found an alternative route home.
I relate this story not as a tale of woe, but rather to acknowledge how lucky we were. Many, many thousands of travellers will have had a much more miserable and frustrating experience than ours this summer, their missing luggage not located so speedily, their holidays tarnished by delays and disruptions, and, finally, their lives inconvenienced by air traffic control malfunction.
Apart from the environmental impact of air travel, the biggest argument I can find in favour of a staycation is not the glories of Cornwall, say, or the Lake District, but the sheer misery of flying these days. It may surprise people of a younger vintage, but there was a time when travelling abroad was a luxury, and not an ordeal.
Airports were not the overcrowded hellholes that they are today, schedules were not merely an exercise in wish-fulfilment, and the on-board experience was vastly superior, and much more egalitarian: one class throughout, a meal for everyone, and a level of service that is now only the preserve of those who can afford to travel at the front of the plane. Everyone even got a little gift on their seat, a pen or a pair of cuff links, maybe, and, on Alitalia, you would find a bijou packet of cigarettes for you to enjoy during the flight. I kid you not.
No, you couldn’t fly to Prague for £10, but that was the point. The advent of budget airlines opened up the possibility of air travel to many millions more people, but in making the business focus exclusively one of economics, the customer experience was degraded to such an extent – even by non-budget carriers – that many travellers today regard air travel with a sense of dread.
Of course, we cannot turn back the clock, any more than we long for the days before smartphones, or lament a time when railway booking offices actually had human beings in them, but as this summer season ends, and the last sweet peas are picked in English gardens, I guarantee that many more people will be saying that, next year, they are not going anywhere near an airport. And that can only be good for the future of humankind.
