I don’t know why anyone chooses to fly if they can avoid it. There’s the hassle of getting to the airport in the first place, long queues at the check-in desks and even longer ones to get through security. They’ve introduced new regulations since I last flew to Oz six months ago, not all of which seem to make a lot of sense. In addition to the liquids/gels/ creams-and-lotions-in-a-plastic-bag rule, there’s now the one-bag-only-on-board rule, which means packing your handbag inside your take-on-board bag at least as far as the security gate, when it can come out of the take-on-board bag for the duration, and once you’re through to duty-free you can then weight yourself down with limitless bags of booze, perfume, electronics, cosmetics, clothes and whatever else have you. So it can’t be for reasons for space. Still, I was chastened by the affable young Japanese American guy who sat next to me while we put our shoes back on and remarked how much safer he felt thanks to having to remove his shoes for inspection.
A cab driver who does a lot of airport pickups was telling me the other day that Heathrow has become such an unpopular airport for business travellers they rarely go near it any more (they go to Europe instead). I said considering the amount of traffic it has to cope with coming in to the airport is remarkably easy and quick but going out is another thing entirely. And as I was sitting reading The Times in the airport lounge waiting for my flight to be called the lead story was about the general awfulness of all the London airports and how much worse they are all going to become, Heathrow especially, due to planned staff cuts (in all areas other than security) which will mean even longer delays, God help us, and you’re already expected to arrive 3 hours before your flight if you are flying intercontinental. Forget carbon footprints. Soon flying will simply become so impossible nobody in their right minds will want to do it.
I was thinking I was sitting on the plane watching the little toy plane zigzagging across the map of the world on the on-board screen, following our route – across Europe, zigzag right at Russia and straight on over Saudi Arabia to India (stopping at Dubai), zigzag right again at Malaysia and on and on in a more or less straight line across northwest Australia past Alice Springs and Ayres Rock (sic) to Sydney – how absurd it is to be travelling halfway across the world and not to be stopping off at some of these places. In all the journeys I’ve made to Australia through the years I never have stopped off anywhere. I’ve usually been travelling on my own and I suppose I’ve thought it isn’t worth the hassle of offloading your suitcase, getting it through customs, loading it into a cab and travelling all the way into town unless you can spend several days there, and I didn’t know that I wanted to do that on my own; not to mention getting back to the airport, going through check-in again, then security (again), and so on. But it does seem a shame.
Anyway, here I am in Oz again, thanks to Emirates (good service but awful food), safely landed more or less on time and met by an old and very dear friend at the airport and an hour later sitting at an outside café drinking coffee looking over the Pacific Ocean in the sunshine. Could be worse, hey?
