I'd love to fly away, but not just yet

It is Day 35 of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Since it began I have started a new job, lost almost a stone in weight and, thanks to tauntingly sunny weekends spent in the garden (not Richmond Park) I’m showing the first brown shoots of a tan. In April. This not-going-out-further-than-the-back-door regime has entailed a lot of looking up into geographically unfamiliar Tuscan-blue skies over south-west London, a vista seemingly unblighted by the ever-present traffic pollution that hangs over the city. 

Another notable absentee has been the air traffic that usually, at certain times of the day, takes off from Heathrow in a south-easterly direction and over our house. Being a bit of a plane geek (I spent many happy hours of school holidays on the roof of Heathrow’s Terminal 3 logging tail numbers in the days when such things were allowed), I’ve been fascinated by the stark reduction in aircraft overhead. What has been taking off has been the occasional passenger flight to eastern Europe or Middle East destinations, while the flight radar app on my iPad has shown that UK commercial airspace is mostly being used by cargo planes. Environmentalists will, of course, be delighted: the blue skies and reappearance of wildlife to suburban gardens is just the return to pre-industrial times they long for. You can’t help, either, enjoying sitting in a garden with the only noise pollution being birds tweeting and children letting off steam in a distant backyard. 

It does, though, makes you wonder how we might return to normal, and what the next normal will be. I’ve always looked at planes in the sky as a symbol of escape, of getting to be somewhere else, somewhere more interesting. And with what should be the holiday season approaching, and the lockdown showing no signs of being lifted, the chances of seeing the outside tables of a Greek taverna, a Sicilian trattoria or a Spanish tapas bar anytime soon seem depressingly limited. Not that I’m craving flying anywhere. The experience of my last job disproved wholesale the idea that it’s better to travel than arrive, and even, to travel at all: in the 12 months between September 2018 and September 2019 I took 51 flights, a ridiculous programme, especially in terms of my carbon footprint, but also in arcane face time philosophy. 

If one good thing has come out of this coronavirus crisis, it’s that the Internet hasn't broken and video conferencing technology is more than adequate at keeping in touch professionally and socially. The first few weeks in my new job may have been a bit weird, in that I’ve seen more of the interiors of my new colleagues’ homes than in any previous job in my 34-year career, but that hasn't stopped being able to function perfectly adequately. Of course, if you work in a job where collaboration and spontaneous engagement is productive, e-mail, Skype and instant messages are a little limiting, but nowhere near the inhibition some might have argued they were. There’s no immediate sign that I’m going to set foot any time soon in my company’s Paddington offices, and I'm fine with that. Our technology is holding up brilliantly, everyone is making the best of it, and it has even fostered an uplifting bunker spirit. Going back into the office will be a challenge for employers, especially as they ensure safer social distancing in communal areas, in canteens, meeting rooms and lifts. The average desk distance in most modern offices is around 1.5 metres, which would require new thinking by corporate real estate planners if employees are to come back. 

Picture: British Airways

So if we’re still, as a nation, wisely reluctant to get on public transport again to get to work, I can’t see much appetite for getting on a flying toothpaste tube for a couple of hours or more for leisure. The other week it was reported that IATA, the international airline trade association, had suggested that for mass air travel to resume, airlines would be forced to fly with at least a third of their planes’ seats empty, with middle seats on single-aisle, three-abreast configuration short-haul flights left vacant to maintain social distancing. Michael O’Leary, the outspoken Ryanair chief executive has branded the idea “idiotic” and said it offered little benefit in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. O’Leary’s airline, of course, has benefited more than most from packing ’em in, last year flying more than 152 million people, placing it at the top of European carriers by passenger numbers. “We can’t make money on 66% load factors,” O’Leary has said. “Even if you do that, the middle seat doesn’t deliver any social distancing, so it’s kind of an idiotic idea that doesn’t achieve anything anyway,” he told the Financial Times. As we've seen with Richard Branson's attempt to have the UK government support Virgin Atlantic financially in the crisis, a well-paid airline CEO complaining about not making money is not going to wash too well. 

When life returns to normal for the airline industry - if it returns to normal - things will clearly be different. Business travel still accounts for the bulk of airline profits, but with video-based professional distancing being accepted like never before and, ideally, remaining the default, non-essential trips abroad for work are going to be pared back, and that’s even before CFOs impose even more draconian travel restrictions as the financial crisis grips harder. The future is certainly looking bleak for the airline industry, even if a partial lifting of the lockdown frees up the leisure travel market. Michael O’Leary believes that normality could return if airlines adopt Asian practices and force passengers to wear face masks, and airports bring in mandatory temperature and even virus testing. That still won’t stop airlines collapsing. The Airport Operators’ Association has said that passenger numbers are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2022. British airports have seen passenger numbers slump by 97%, with up to 80% of staff being furloughed in some cases.

All this, though, assumes that 'normality' will be anything like that we enjoyed as little as a few weeks ago. There are, for now, too many variables, and even if lockdown rules in all those countries affected by this pandemic start to relax, what that relaxation will be like, and how long it will remain in place before a second phase of COVID-19 forces us back behind our front doors again is anyone's guess. The extreme view of the world today is that the virus has initiated a form of Pol Pot's Year Zero regime. It's not, obviously, but the absence of planes in the skies, and even traffic on our roads, may be one of the things that doesn't recover. Bad news for the airline industry, which has enjoyed an unprecedented boom in the last couple of decades. Bad news, too, for the likes of Boeing and Airbus, who were pumping out new planes at a rate of knots until relatively recently (Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told his 133,000 employees in a letter last Friday that the business was “...bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed, which may threaten the very existence of our company”). It is, though, conceivable that the world will start moving again. Chinese tourists will still want to visit Paris, Americans will still want to have their photographs taken outside Buckingham Palace, and I for one will still want to see the Mediterranean again. Just not yet.

What a carry on!

And so I find myself in Barcelona - both a perk and necessity of my job, so I'm not complaining - but getting here was another test of whether it is better to travel or to arrive.

I visit the delightful Catalan capital every year for a telecoms industry event, and each time I give serious thought to taking the train. Even if the reality of rail travel is not always so, there is something decidedly romantic and decadent about travelling by train across Europe. If it's good enough for James Bond, it's good enough for me.

However, being a work trip, spending half a day watching cows, telegraph poles and rustic charm fly past the window just isn't viable when there are things to do at the other end. So the plane wins and because it's a work trip, there's little choice of airline or comfort level. Again, not complaining, but as anyone who travels frequently will attest, taking the plane takes most of the strain. In fact, it is more of an exercise in ordeal management.

Since the beginning of December I have taken 19 flights, for business and for personal reasons. That, I recognise, might sound quite a lot of air travel, but it's nowhere near as much as those business executives who casually list "an airport somewhere" as a location in their Twitter bio. Certainly, though, it is more than people who fly just a couple of times a year, to and from a beach.

But no matter how often you fly, when you do you will encounter humanity at its most selfish and broken. You will be reminded - without any room for doubt - that travel doesn't broaden the mind at all and, in practice, appears to do the exact opposite. 

Firstly, you would have thought that in the 14 whole years since 9/11 the concept of "tighter security" would have sunk in. But, no. Some clearly didn't get the memo, a whole teenager's lifetime ago, that being "prepared to fly" means removing shoes, belts and overcoats, and taking liquids, laptops and iPads out of carry-on luggage.

Then to the next pain point: the boarding process. Here, no one airport, nationality or airline has the monopoly on stupid. It would be wholly wrong to single out queuing chaos at French and Italian boarding gates as simply cultural unfamiliarity with the concept of queuing, because American airports are just as bad, if not worse. "We will be boarding you by row number" should not be too hard to comprehend. Clearly it is, judging by those who consider this information inapplicable to them, and adopt the "Que?" expression of Manuel in Fawlty Towers when told that it's not their turn.

All that said, security queues and cretinous gate behaviour (and that perennial flying aggravation, the dickhead - because it usually is a bloke - reclining their seat for a journey of less than an hour's duration) pale into irritation-free insignificance when it comes to carry-on luggage. 

There are two aspects of this that we should consider: first, 'carry-on' should actually refer to a bag that you can, you know, carry-on, as opposed to dragging it like a Victorian rail porter handling trunks for the European tour. It shouldn't really require wheels, either, if it is to faithfully support the category it falls under. And then there is the insistence that because you can drag a wheely bag on board, everybody does it, leading to a recreation of the Ben Hur chariot race on budget flights as everybody charges forward to nab the overhead locker space.

When budget airlines first began, carry-on luggage was just that. But now, luggage has - like most other aspects of society: cars, fast food and teenagers - super-sized, requiring Airbus and Boeing to redesign their aircraft with those pop-up tent extensions that you used to get on Volkswagen Dormobiles. Because, there we all are on most flights, queing with one foot in the plane's door, while somewhere around the corner an idiot is trying to hump half their bodyweight into an open overhead locker a good foot beyond their reach.

There was a time when you checked in at the airport, usually at the crack of dawn, to be met by a slightly surly check-in person (not surprising, given the hour) clacking away at a keyboard for no obvious reason. In exchange for handing over your luggage, this person would give you a boarding pass, allowing you to skip on through security to gorge your credit card on duty free. And then, at the end of the flight, you'd assemble at the baggage carousel like an expectant parent at the school gate, feeling your blood pressure rising as everyone else's bags went past on the conveyor belt before yours eventually arrived like that last wheezing London Marathon runner dressed as Tower Bridge.

But in our instant, must-have-it-now society, checking in your bags is far too much faff. No, for the sake of saving 15 minutes at the other end, take your bags with you. And, thanks to Ryanair and others, you'll be incentivised to doing so by saving you the exorbitant cost of putting luggae in the hold. Which means people do everything they can to stuff whatever they can into their carry-on bags, which they then shove into the overhead locker without regard for anyone getting anything else in.

The airlines, however, are somewhat to blame for this. The lack of consistency in luggage limits is one issue: some airlines limit you to 20kg for hold bags, while for others its 23kg each. For those travelling in premium seats, you could enjoy up to 32kg...or two or more bags of 23kg each. Confused? For carry-on baggage, there is generally a 23kg weight limit and in principle some sort of limit on the size. Not that I've ever seen any rigid checking on either - people could have gold bars stuffed into their wheelie bag for all I could tell.

Not surprisingly, then, as passengers insist on bringing on everything and the kitchen sink, things can get dangerous. Late last year a writer from North London, Wayne Herbert, was reportedly suing British Airways after getting injured by a rucksack falling from an overhead locker as his flight waited for take off. "Passengers sitting in the row behind were trying to load too much luggage into the overhead," Herbert told the Evening Standard, "and dropped a bag on my head. It bashed me on the top of my head, and has given me a whiplash injury." A similiar thing happened on another BA flight, heading for Bangkok, when a bag fell from an overhead locker during takeoff itself, landing heavily on the head of the passenger below.

It isn't an exclusively British Airways problem, and most cabin crew I see make every effort to ensure lockers - like our seatbelts and tray tables - are secured before takeoff. But accidents do happen, and it wouldn't surprise me if the lockers themselves struggle to cope with what gets stuffed into them on a regular basis.

More must be done by airlines to make more rigourous checks for both weight and size of carry-on bags. And redesigning lockers is not the answer, either. Boeing was said to be working with the American carriers United and Delta to design luggage space to fit passengers' expectations of what they can bring on board, especially given the punitive charges US airlines charge for checked luggage. 

The problem, however, is not just baggage fees - people simply want to bring more on board with them. "For passengers, volume doesn't really matter. It's whether or not my bag fits," Boeing's cabin expert Kent Craver told the Daily Mail in 2012. They also want to stow their bag where they sit. "They don't want it 20 rows behind them or 20 rows in front of them, because that causes a lot of anxiety."

Understandable as that is, the potentially deadly fire that broke out last September on a BA Boeing 777 at Las Vegas' McCarran Airport highlighted the problem of hand luggage, as passengers were seen leaving the burning plane carrying their carry-on bags. Presumably they would have been reaching for them as the evacuation instruction was being given.

So, even if new planes like the 787 Dreamliner and A350 are designed with new storage space, until airlines get tougher on the weight and quantity of bags being taken on board, problems of the boarding process being held up - a cost to the airline and a frustration to both crew and other passengers - will never be solved.