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I spent a good part of my working life flying from one place to another and since I retired miss not a moment of it. Flying is far too much hassle these days.
There was a time, decades ago now, when there was an excitement in flying. It was fun. We didn’t pay a great deal of attention to baggage weights, we put on decent clothes and often looked forward to the meals and free drinks the airlines served. You pitched up at the airport an hour before departure and were soon sitting in the departure lounge waiting for the flight to be called. Flight crews had the time to point out places of interest as we flew over them and pilots would often take a stroll through the cabin to chat with the passengers. Small boys would often be invited up to the cockpit for a visit and have the controls explained to them.
But slowly, imperceptibly, all that changed. Check-in times lengthened along with the long and tiring queues that were involved. Seat spaces got smaller, meals became virtually inedible and free drinks all but disappeared. The number of cabin crews were cut and those who remained barely had the time to perform all their normal duties plus sell duty-frees, let alone provide the service to passengers that they used to give.
Security scares inevitably arose and security tightened with them. ‘What was the purpose of your travel to Pakistan?’ I used to get asked regularly and was glad that a new passport carried no entry stamps of any sort. US immigration inspectors would sometimes ask me the date of my last leaving the US as if a wrong answer might indicate some sort of irregularity.
Then baggage rules were tightened. As I lived for a while in California, I was one of the lucky ones that often travelled with just a briefcase for I had clothes both in the States and the UK. Boy!, did that sometimes cause confusion at airports!
And then 911 occurred and everything went from bad to worse. For all the best reasons, of course, and I would be the first to say that anything that made flying safer is a good thing.
But, alas, all those things that make flying safer also make it a lot more irksome and stressful. This is particularly the case after the failed bomb attack on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day when a man tried to ignite explosives hidden in his underpants. As a result of this, security has become tighter.
And so, to repeat what I said before, flying is no longer any fun. The queues and check-in times have just got longer and the whole business is becoming too much trouble.
There is now talk of introducing pat-down searches, full-body scanners and advanced X-ray technology. I’m all for it, but can you imagine the queues that will form when little old ladies, people who are partially disabled and cantankerous children try to understand what is required of them as they pass through some of these devices?
For the last hour of a flight, at least on those to the States, passengers will have to stay in their seats for the last hour and will not be allowed access to their possessions during that period. What if I urgently need to take a widdle or suddenly need my inhaler?
Flying? No thanks. I think I will stick to coaches, trains and ships!
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