They Can Do It When They Want To

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I don't know about anyone else but the thought of flying anywhere these days fills me with dread. It's not that I'm afraid of flying, it's just that I hate the whole process of paying a fortune to be treated like cattle. The worst part for me is when you actually begin boarding the plane. "Great", you think, "Not be long until we're soaring through the clouds". But it never happens like that. It seems to take forever to get everyone's boarding passes checked and then the real fun begins as people actually start getting on the aircraft. The concept of combining a row number with a letter to identify a unique seat seems to be extremely difficult to grasp for many people these days. By the time people have argued over whether or not they're in the wrong seat (and they invariably are), accepted that they are after a lengthy discussion with the cabin crew, repeated the whole process in an attempt to find their correct seat, found their correct seat and found an empty overhead storage locker to store their suspiciously oversized cabin bag in we've missed the take-off slot and have to wait around for half an hour for the next available slot. And woe-betide anyone who dares to undo their seatbelt once the process of taxiing to the runway has begun. However, when flying back from Cyprus last week we had an altogether different experience. The checking of boarding passes was done in double quick time, the cabin crew seemed to be content to let everyone sort out their own seating issues and people were still trying to find their seats and others were putting stuff in the overhead storage while the plane was taxiing to the runway. The whole process of beginning boarding and reaching the end of the runway took about 20 minutes. Was this some new, super-efficient airline I hear you cry. Is this the shape of things to come for air-travel? I fear not. The flight was seriously delayed and was in grave danger of being more than 3 hours late, the point at which compensation has to be paid by the airline. There is a happy ending to this story. The flight landed 3 hours and 4 minutes late and I have a total of £1050 compensation heading my way.