Better off grounded than tolerating the misery of flying

It’s not by way of complaint because I’ve been through there before and it is a perfectly fine regional airport.

But times have changed. Nothing is as it was and even less what it seems.

When we eventually taxied to take off for Dublin, hours late, our pilot apologised. He informed us that the Yorkshire airport is struggling with staff shortages. Surprise, surprise.

Perhaps I’m not the best to judge. Although fine with flying, it’s the fuss and bother of airports that sets me on edge.

I can’t properly recall what air travel was like before 9/11. Reasonably uncomplicated, if memory serves at all.

Now, the post-Great Pandemic shock has added layers of more teeth-grinding stress to the once-simple ambition of taking off in one place and landing in another.

The particular problem on this afternoon seemed to be that a small, under-resourced airport was trying to jet a great rush of English holidaymakers to the costas all at once.

It was never going to work. There were queues for food and longer ones for booze. Information boards kept us in suspense but rarely kept us informed.

The air was clammy, the racket incessant and it was all about as much fun as being stuck in a small lift with the cast of Love Island.

If the Covid virus was brazen enough to host a conference called Planning For the Future, this would have been the perfect venue. So many maskless recruits in a crowded space.

As experiences of this strange summer go, it was an unremarkable one.

But it was more than enough to convince me that air travel from now on is something I will do when I must, rather than because I can.

Perhaps this habit of cheap, on-a-whim flying is coming to an end. Signs are it is an unsustainable model.

If the Twin Towers robbed it of much of the spontaneity, the pandemic has added nerve-wracking uncertainty to the experience.

War in Europe and a related energy crisis can only make matters worse before anyone figures out a way of making them better.

Michael O’Leary knows so. He told the Financial Times that flyers will face years of rising fares. It is absurd, he noted, that the price of a rail fare from Stansted to London is dearer than the originating flight.

Perhaps this has already begun. Flights to the sun are more expensive than last year, though still much lower than a decade ago.

Hopefully we will never go back to the days when a short hop on the national carrier cost a month’s hard-earned wages.

But something seems to have snapped this summer. I’ve seen enough of it close up to keep me firmly grounded.