About the time man first walked on the moon, flying was considered to be quite glamorous.
Mid 20th-century flyers reveal: seats were bigger, the cutlery didn’t snap in half at the sight of spaghetti and the “air hostesses” were hot.
Back then commercial air travel must have been like going to a nightclub. It involved wearing your coolest clothes, guzzling free booze without fear of being restrained in plastic cuffs and at least pretending you’d got laid. There was enough legroom to turn a thrombosis into a new dance move and, as for smoking on board, who didn’t?
Such in-flight entertainments are unthinkable now and there’s only so much fun to be had with a packet of socks and an eye-patch.
Spirits broken, we cattle-class passengers now behave exactly like cows in transit — docile, resigned. We’ll wear anything with an elasticised waistband and what little free will we have left is spent trying not to antagonise the cabin crew by asking them for anything. Has anyone noticed that the “ring for service” buzzer has gone the way of the ashtray?
Flight attendants are more “not” than “hot” and aircraft have become holding pens designed to keep us as quiet and immobilised as possible. Passenger hypnosis is no longer achieved by chucking miniatures at troublemakers, but by scratchy little TVs that never switch off.
But, compared with spending time in airports, flying is super-fantastic.
Since 9/11 airport security — at least in the United States and Europe — has become an elaborate pantomime that takes more time to perform than some of the flights themselves.
You wanna confiscate my tweezers? Go ahead, I’ll hit the pilot over the head with my complimentary in-flight wine bottle and seize the controls.
Anyway, what would a suicide bomber want with a pair of tweezers? Surely an end to unwanted facial hair would be the upside to a martyr’s death? Without tweezers, I, on the other hand, may look like a suicide bomber by the time I disembark.
You want the Issey Miyake perfume I bought at Duty “Free” for a whack of cash? Go for it, I’ll liberate the West with my nail varnish and a box of matches.
Boots too? No problem — shoe bombers are so last season. I’m putting all my R&D into building a secret sock bomb.
Airport security is a real issue and I’m sure most of us are reassured to note the thoroughness with which bags are screened. I don’t even much mind the body frisk, though lately I’ve noticed it’s getting more … forensic. Last week at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris I had to lift my heels like hooves for a laser swipe. I felt as if I’d stepped in something nasty and was being inspected by my mother before being allowed in the house. Laughably, the official who carried out this humiliating examination asked me for permission before she started. Being obliged to open your mouth and say “aaahh” can’t be far behind.
In online debates about the efficacy of extreme security measures, pilots and security boffs tend to say two things: one, that they are overcooked and serve no real purpose except to present weary travellers with the spectacle of security; and two, as far as terrorists go, where there’s a will there’s always a way to get dangerous people and stuff on to aeroplanes.
So why don’t we rise up and complain about some of the more absurd measures that waste time, which could be better spent buying Eiffel Tower coasters for someone you don’t like much? Because the climate of fear created by 9/11 has subsided into the culture of silent suffering. I ask you, where were the cows on George Orwell’s Animal Farm? Precisely.
There was one bright spot in my latest brush with airport culture. After executing the security line striptease, I was told to open my hand luggage and take everything out. Pinging on latex gloves, the official found what had set off the x-ray machine: a large glass jar of foie gras.
At this point I was ready to sing like a canary and turn state witness on my children, but she leaned over the counter and in rapid, conspiratorial French, not all of which I understood, she told me I could keep it.
“Normalement“, she whispered, I would face the guillotine for such a crime (and she didn’t mean against the goose), but just this once, well …
It would take more than a bomb scare to part the French from their food. I think they’ve got the whole question of airport security in perspective.
So when I hear that rising fuel prices may soon make cheap flights a thrill of the past and expensive flights unaffordable, there’s a little part of me that thinks it would be quite nice. Once none of us can fly any more we’ll revert to living off the land and commuting by bi-cycle, animal or mineral. I think I’ll raise geese.