Dadblog

After my rant about BAA last week, I flew to Portugal. The flight out (with Queasyjet) was almost two hours late, which was spent on an uncleaned table outside a Wetherspoon’s. We had wanted to go to Chez Gerard, but the tables there were piled high with the detritus of previous meals. And by high, I mean high. Then, on the way home, the BA flight was two hours late as well, but thankfully Faro airport’s marginally nicer than Gatwick. So once again I’m thinking about the modern plague that is air travel. Some interesting links: Chris Anderson’s How Can Air Travel Be Free?, where I learned that it costs RyanAir only $70 (that’s less than £35, thanks for Mr George Bush’s economic policies) to fly me from London to Barcelona. There is no way on earth that experience can be pleasant at that kind of price. I got the link from Jeff’s post about a disabled lady who was forced to travel to an airport to get a refund. He calls her “Customer Omega….the last screwed customer.”

She won’t be, of course. What all us middle-class grumps ignore is that, in generational terms, affordable flights to foreign countries are still a novelty. They’ve been with us for barely two decades. Airlines have found massive new markets among the young and the lower-paid for whom, two decades ago, flights to Barcelona would have been unheard of. Those massive new markets brought in new passengers and new ways of thinking. Or, in BAA’s case, not thinking.

Thing is, it won’t do anymore. Our expectations have grown. So why is the market not responding? Why is there such a yawning gap between economy and first-class? Why is there not a market for, say, £100 flights to Barcelona, where there are certain guarantees of punctuality and access to facilities? In this regard, ironically the low-cost airlines are the most innovative, with things like paid-for speedy boarding and quicker security queues. But at the end of the day an easyJet flight is an easyJet flight, cheap and occasionally cheerful. Where is the Radio 4/John Lewis/Waitrose/Marks and Sparks airline - honestly priced, decently reliably and staunchly, proudly middle-class?