End of the runway for the ‘Queen of the Skies’

Picture: British Airways

I’ve blogged before about the majestic Boeing 747 and how, after five decades in the air, its future was limited. Today, the era of commercial aviation that the original “jumbo jet” defined will come to something of an end when the final 747 rolls of the Boeing production line in the US.

The plane, a cargo version built for Atlas Air, will be the 1,574th production model built by Boeing since the programme began in 1968, the result of Pan American founder Juan Trippe challenging then-Boeing president William Allen to build a plane even bigger than the company’s 707 model, the original game changer to long-distance air travel. The 747, however, evolved things even further, providing a platform for up to 400 seats and the ability to cover vast distances relatively quickly. Significantly, it enabled affordable intercontinental travel: I’m sure most Brits’ experience of places like Florida and New York were the result of flying there in a 747. I know all my first visits to America were via the beautiful flying ocean liner.

Three years ago, as Covid started to wreak havoc, British Airways announced the immediate retirement of its 31 747s. The airline had, then, by far the largest fleet of the type still flying. However, even before the pandemic grounded airlines, the aircraft that democratised air travel had started to become an anachronism as more fuel efficient planes like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 DreamLiner began replacing such an ageing gas-guzzler as the 747. BA’s decision to end use of the 747 was, romanticism aside, a rational one. It was planning to retire the 747 in 2024 in any case - 25 years after its first -400 models were introduced - and had remained remarkably loyal to the type. US carriers United Airlines and Delta ended their 747 operations in 2017, while Virgin Atlantic (with whom I took my first US trip, in 1992) retired their 747s in 2020. Lufthansa, one of the few airlines to buy the last 747 type, the -8, are planning the retirement of their fleet, as has KLM.

In those mad days of yore when I used to get on a plane as often as some board a bus, no journey would fill me with the same excitement as one in which I flew in a Boeing 747. When I left San Francisco to move back to Amsterdam in 2003, I got upgraded to a business class seat for the flight with the now defunct Northwest Airlines, who put a 747 on the route. That meant sitting in the upper deck cabin, with a window seat looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge as we soared out of SFO. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I shed a tear - but not because I was leaving California, just the shear romance of it all. I've been lucky enough to get seats on that upper deck on a number of occasions, and it never fails to enamour, not the least, the novelty of having side storage bins that follow the contours of the Jumbo’s haughty prow.

Picture: British Airways

Even ‘downstairs’, the 747 experience just seemed like no other. Despite its enormous size, the 747 was a very quick plane. While it could never compete with Concorde for speed across the Atlantic, seven hours in the air wasn't a particular hardship to get to New York (even less on the way back to London with a decent following wind). What let BA’s fleet down towards the end was the ageing interior of their 747s, which often lacked the basic connectivity that more modern planes offer as standard. But these were, ultimately, minor quibbles. On journeys to and from San Jose in a previous job, the sensible approach would have been to take BA’s direct flight from Heathrow in a comfy 787, but with the 747 still on the San Francisco route, I’d opt for the love of Boeing’s jumbo, even though there’d be an arduous hour’s drive down to Silicon Valley on landing.

The 747’s decline is sad but it had, to some extent, outlasted its relevance. It will, though, continue in a long-running build for the US Air Force of two specially adapted jets to be used for the President (as ‘Air Force One’), along with cargo versions like Atlas Air’s new addition, a popular option for freight carriers due to the plane’s vast interior. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also using one of his airline’s old 747s, Cosmic Girl,  for its nascent satellite launch venture. 

Indeed, the idea of large jets is not entirely over, either. Although the double-deck Airbus A380 has now stopped production, it is likely to remain in use for the foreseeable future, despite being, like the 747, four-engined. Emirates bought 118 of the type to ship large numbers of passengers to and from its Dubai hub. British Airways has even brought its own A380s out mothballs, having put them into storage during the pandemic. While not as romantically appreciated as the 747, passengers love the A380 for its comfort and, for such a lumbering giant, efficiency in flying point-to-point. 

It is, though, clear that despite the A380 enduring, twin-engined jets like the A350 and Boeing’s 777 and 787 models do the job, with less passengers, and more efficiently, from a carbon footprint point of view. The days of flying in a plane with an upper deck, and more than its sense of aviation decadence are, without doubt coming to an end.

Picture: British Airways

 

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.

It’s very nice to go travellin’…sometimes

Picture: British Airways

There are plenty of pithy quotes about travel, and I could be somewhat pretentious here by referencing the Taoist saying that "the journey is the reward”, but I’d prefer the kernel of Robert Louis Stephenson's oft-truncated "for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive", which says much the same thing. Because it just isn’t. Fact.

In the last three months I’ve spent a lot of time in the air. In fact, I’m writing this on my way back from Dubai on a trip that comes only a week after returning from a visit to Los Angeles. Ooh, get him! And, yes, I am aware of my extending carbon footprint... And there's even more to come. Over the course of March and the beginning of April I traversed some 7,000 miles of continental Europe on a tour of cities where my company was staging a series of customer events. All but 300 of those miles were conducted by plane, which meant that many - if not most - journeys required dealing with those [mostly] alpha male road warriors who spend much of their working lives plying these routes, hogging the overhead luggage bins and generally acting like utter cocks. Many are quite senior in their companies, spending their days in dull business review meetings, looking at pie charts and spreadsheets and barking out instructions and percentages. In other words, they are used to getting their own way in general, which leads to a sense of entitlement when they board a plane while flashing their high-tier frequent flier status (the coveted ‘gold’ level that opens up the perfumed gardens of first class lounges and the ‘priority’ boarding group - the one that gets them to their seat before the rest of us plebs, taking a provocative age to fold their raincoat neatly into the overhead bin while belligerently blocking the aisle to prevent the remaining 30 rows to fill up). At this point I have to confess that I, too, have tasted this nirvana. I’ll confess to the occasional upgrade that has propelled me to the front of the boarding queue. However, this is a double-edged sword: on the one hand you’re seated smugly with your carry-on wheelie case stowed and a hot towel with which to freshen up, but on the other hand, your remaining passengers troop past with barely concealed contempt, casting you the skunk-eye as they go.

If your only experience of air travel is an annual excursion to a beach somewhere then you’ve actually been spared the worst of it. I don’t mean that to sound elitist, but even enduring passengers who’ve been downing pints of Stella since 4.30 in the morning at the Gatwick bar are a mild irritation compared with the passive-aggression of some regular business travellers. That’s right, the armrest-hogging, stow-my-bag-sideways-in-the-locker, hover in front of the boarding aisle as if that makes actual boarding happen sooner, types who demonstrate my long-held belief that travel really does bring out the worst in people. As I am often reminded, it doesn’t really matter which class you fly in (“we’ll all get there at the same time”). Well, in principle, yes, though that doesn’t stop the pushy types who rush from the back on landing and bundle past those trying to exit their rows like cars filtering into traffic. I know that some of these serial bargers might be desperate to make a connecting flight, but the experience of many of my recent journeys has been somewhat different. “Gits,” we shall call them.

© Simon Poulter 2019

Two of the journeys in my burst of travel in March were by train, and I have to say, they restored my faith in the old locomotive. In the early days of living in Paris I used the Eurostar to get back to London for the weekend. But the prevalence of delays caused by everything from trackside fires outside Gare du Nord to illegal immigrants in the Channel Tunnel rendered the Eurostar anything less than the romantic notion of Jason Bourne-style city-to-city travel. However, recent trips from Zurich to Milan, and Milan to Lausanne reminded me that it's not at all a bad way to travel. Being the Swiss railway, the trains were punctual and comfortable, even in second class. And what better way to travel than watching lakes, snow-capped mountains and quaint chalets passing by the window? And not a single scrap for overhead locker space. Notable, too, was the absence of turbulence, or Storm Gareth which contrived to bugger up my journey into and out of Amsterdam.

So, if you haven’t taken this on board so far, travel isn’t all it's cracked up to be. It’s a refrain I’ve found myself repeating a lot in recent months, as friends have commented on what seems like near-daily Facebook posts of “Simon Poulter is travelling from Airport X to Airport Y”. And there is now some scientific evidence to prove this point. Researchers at the University of Surrey and at Sweden’s Linnaeus University recently published a report into the “darker side of hypermobility”, that group of people - which I suppose must, now, include me - who travel a lot, mainly for work and end up inducing both envy and disdain from their social circles for the never-ending updates which, perhaps, suggest a veneer of ‘jet set’ (in old money) glamour. Underlying this, however, is anything but glamour.

The study found that frequent travel bears three types of risk: physiological, psychological and emotional, and social. The physiological is, essentially, jet lag but unbeknownst to most who succumb to it with their travels is the fact that spending extended hours crossing oceans, continents and timezones speeds up the ageing process and raises the risk of a heart attack or stroke. And that’s on top of deep-vein thrombosis, absorbing strangers’ germs (and not necessarily from airplane toilet seats - your tray table is a proper little germ farm), and exposure to levels of radiation for some frequent flyers that goes well beyond regulatory limits on the ground. Add to that, a lack of exercise and poor diet, and you’ve got a cocktail of lethality.

The view from seat 68K
© Simon Poulter 2019

The Surrey/Linnsaeus study then found that business travel takes its toll psychologically and emotionally, especially when you combine the isolation of often travelling alone and separated from loved ones with work stress (especially managing e-mail and incoming demands while on the move). A study of World Bank employees found that there was a three times-higher likelihood of frequent business travellers making insurance claims about psychological mistreatment. Finally, the study also identified a social impact, in particular, the creation of ‘war brides’. Most business travellers are male (the French hotel group Accor found in a 2011 survey that 74% of Asian business travellers were men), adding pressure on partners who remain at home, especially with children. There was even evidence that friendships suffer, as frequent business travellers prioritise immediate family when they are back on home soil.

Even factoring in that those who travel abroad for work the most tend to be in the upper echelons of the corporate ladder, and are therefore more likely to be compensated for it, being part of the “mobile elite” is not all champagne flutes at 39,000ft. Well, it might be for some, but for the vast majority of us, compressed into an economy class seat by corporate travel policies, and racing to catch connecting flights because the company travel agency found the only routing that was ‘in policy’, spare a thought for the mounting expenses backlog and the utter dirge of truly awful airline food. And take pity on us - well, me in particular - who’ve succumbed to the reality of air travel, which, perhaps more than any other form of organised movement, seems to generate a sense of entitlement, regarding professional and social achievement as that nirvana of over-inflated privilege, the airline lounge, and who regularly put up with the vagaries, the ageing plane fleets and the penny-pinching contempt of pledging unstinting loyalty to one airline over another to get in there. Have pity.

Guess I picked the wrong week to give up drinking

Taking a plane was, once, an exercise in projected sophistication, where even the most proletariat of us felt like Cary Grant at the mere possession of a boarding pass. But that all changed when everyone decided to get in on it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: travel brings out the worst in everyone, rendering modern air travel considerably less of the glamfest it once was. Once you've survived the public humiliation of walking barefoot through a full body scanner, your beltless trousers displaying that you're too cheap to actually buy Calvin Klein underwear, you must then witness the utter desperation of "speedy boarding" as families leg it for the departure gate...despite being transferred to the plane by bus. This is then followed by gittish overhead locker space hogging (avoiding selling a kidney just to put a bag in the hold) before taking a seat in a row so tight even regularly-sized people need a boarding pass for each buttock. And all that before being charged the equivalent of Uruguay's national debt for a half tub of Pringles while suffering spine-shattering mid-air turbulence caused by global warming, which has itself been contributed to by all this flying.

Air travel is hell, so it's no surprise that people turn up for flights not-so elegantly wasted or break open their duty-free tequila as soon as the seatbelt signs are turned off. However, as bossy teachers (if I can use that brand) used to say, "there's always one who spoils it for the others". Actually, it's more than one - hen parties and rugby club tours, mostly, who seem unable to fly an hour or so on CheapyJet to Tallinn or Puerto Banus without first consuming a weekend's worth of grog before they've even left the airport bar. Which is not what airport bars are for.

Pre-flight drinking used to be part of the glamour. An exotic cocktail in the company of interesting, erudite international travellers, or a couple of strong ones to calm the nerves of the nervous flyer, or a romantic glass of champagne to get the honeymoon off to a gooey-eyed start. But, no. Despite airports being partially designed to encourage drinking via concourse bars and duty-free shops, the trouble is that too many people are availing themselves too much.

In February, a six-man stag party flying to Bratislava from Luton was arrested after brawling onboard the plane, leading to it being diverted to Berlin. A month later a group of 24 Irish men were thrown off a flight to Costa Rica after allegedly becoming "drunk and abusive" as it waited for takeoff at Gatwick Airport. In May a woman found to be "unresponsive" and slumped in her seat was ordered off an easyJet plane to Paphos before it had even left Manchester Airport...punching the pilot in the process, forcing the airline to replace him, delaying the flight further. And it's not just those 'turning right' at the aircraft door causing trouble: last December, Finnish dress designer Leena Romu attacked a flight attendant as she was boarding a Virgin plane to Dubai, "noticeably unsteady on her feet" and clutching bottles (plural) of duty-free. She was flying First Class.

By and large these are isolated incidents, but the increasing regularity with which they are being reported appears to be enough for Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Aviation, to decide to look into doing something about it. "If you’re a young family travelling on a plane you want to go from point A to B, you don’t want to be disrupted," Ahmad said last week (and good that the UK's aviation minister gets the concept of travelling from one place to another...). He does, though, have a point. "I don’t think we want to kill merriment altogether," he added, "but I think it’s important that passengers who board planes are also responsible and have a responsibility to other passengers, and that certainly should be the factor which we bear in mind."

In 30-plus years of frequent flying I've been rarely troubled by boozy passengers: there was my first ever long-haul flight, to Los Angeles, when I stupidly picked seat 52A of a Virgin Atlantic 747. Not only was I in the smoking section (remember those? Not fun on a 13-hour flight...), but I was sat next to a chain-smoking, G&T-guzzling bit-part actor heading home. He had a grand sounding name (and is still active - I've checked), who told me he'd been in the soap All My Children and episodes of Murder She Wrote. There very nearly was a murder in seat 52B as "Claude" continuously ordered more to drink as he rattled on about Angela Landsbury and Cabot Cove until, thankfully, passing out somewhere over Canada. That, and a pair of American technology salesmen (identified by their tan chinos, golf shirts and loud voices) sat in front of me on a recent British Airways flight from London to Paris, and managed to get loaded on tiny bottles of wine in just the 45 minutes we were in the air, is about it. Perhaps I've been lucky or, perhaps, these incidents have been blown out of proportion by the press. But police statistics obtained under a freedom of information request have shown that over the last two years more than 400 people have been arrested on suspicion of being drunk on flights in the UK.

Out of 250 million passengers handled by British airports each year, that may not sound a lot, but if one of those 400 disrupted your holiday, you'd be justifiably annoyed. And it's something the airlines themselves say needs to be tackled. It is certainly enough of a nuisance problem for the British Government to consider action. A first step would be identifying whether or not the current rules do enough to prevent a bit of fun turning into something more serious. Currently, bars at British airports are allowed to be open according to the earliest and latest flights of the day, a common practice at most airports around the world, and in the case of London's Gatwick, for example, means the taps are open as early as 4am for those departing on holiday flights.

Furthermore, airport bars are not subjected to the same licensing restrictions as pubs, bars and restaurants on the outside, and can, in theory, be open 24 hours a day. This, says Lord Ahmad, is something that "needs to be looked at". Last week the new UK Aviation Industry Code of Practice on Disruptive Passengers was published and included guidance to cabin crew that duty-free booze shouldn't be opened in-flight, and that terminal bars should stop selling alcohol to passengers showing signs of drunkeness (which, I thought, was already the case, along with check-in desk personnel being trained to spot - and smell - drunken behaviour). New rules will mean that any alcohol bought in duty-free shops should be stored on flights away from passengers or in bags that should remain sealed for the duration of the flight. At present, it would appear, nothing prevents sealed duty-free shopping from being opened once onboard.

"I don't think we want to kill merriment altogether," Ahmad said last week, adding that passengers do "have a responsibility to other passengers". Quite how far the government will go, however is - if you can excuse the pun - up in the air. Simon Calder, travel editor of The Independent, says that any action is unlikely to lead to an outright drinking ban at airports or on planes. "It won't happen with a straightforward booze ban", he told ITV's Good Morning Britain. "There'll be various techniques [the government] will be looking at, such as opening hours and restricting the number of drinks you can have. You may have to have your boarding card scanned or marked so you only have a couple of drinks." Breathalyzing passengers at risk of being drunk might be another possibility, Calder said, and it might be done "on a flight-by-flight basis", given that the same 'party' destinations crop up in the charge sheet of reported incidents.

"With air travel proving more popular than ever, and passenger numbers expected to rise across the whole of the UK in the coming years, now is the time to tackle this problem collectively," said Tim Alderslade, Chief Executive of the British Air Transport Association and Ed Anderson, Chairman of the Airport Operators Association, in a joint statement.

You can't knock their initiative, of course, or indeed the desire of airlines to tackle the problem. But equally you can't help feeling that it is a problem that, while the industry hasn't exactly created it, has certainly benefited from financially in both making air travel more available, and getting people to pay hansomely at airport bars for a few pints too many at Stupid O'Clock in the morning. Perhaps it is time to reign this in.

Stretching legs - why long-haul could be getting longer

As this blog commented on last month, air travel leaves much to be desired. For the most part, getting crammed into a toothpaste tube with wings is simply a necessary evil for those of us who have to travel for business or personal reasons.

Living and working in Paris and, increasingly, London, flying just about edges out taking the Eurostar between these two cities, a journey which, since last summer especially, has carried the considerable risk of the train getting stuck in or just outside the Channel Tunnel thanks to miscreants disrupting services in Calais (yeah, I know, desperate refugees escaping unspeakable horrors in their homeland getting in the way of my highfalutin' business meeting...). Call me precious but I really don't fancy the idea of being locked in a carriage without air conditioning or electricity for the nine or ten hours that some Eurostar passengers have been forced to endure while the authorities try and sort out track intrusions.

This does, however, bring me to a travel horror of a different sort: long-haul flying. Though my musings on aviation might suggest otherwise, I'm really not that well travelled. I've been to Asia just the once (via a fifteen-hour flight from San Francisco to Taiwan, on which, for the only time in my life, I managed to get some proper sleep courtesy of misreading the dosage instructions of sleeping pills I was offered). After that, the longest I've spent in the air has been between Europe and the US West Coast.

When I first flew from London to Los Angeles in 1992, I had barely been anywhere, let alone the other side of the continent on the other side of the Atlantic. I had no idea what 12 and a half hours sat in the smoking section of a Virgin 747 would be like, especially with a chain-smoking bit-part actor next to me, knocking back V&Ts like they were going out of fashion while boring me rigid about episodes of Murder She Wrote that he'd appeared in (since IMDB-verified, I have to admit). Until he passed out.

Nothing could prepare me for the world of disorientation that jet lag would induce for the first time. The next morning I drove out of my airport hotel and, instead of heading towards the 405 freeway and north to Hollywood, I drove east into South Central, barely months after the summer riots of 1992. A young English tourist conspiculously driving a shiny new Dodge Dynasty through Hawthorne was not the wisest decision jet lag could have mis-made for me. So, by the time I realised I was on Rosencrans Avenue, near its junction with Normandie Avenue and therefore epicentre of the trouble, I decided that a U-turn might be wise.

In the years since, including a spell living in California itself, I've grown used to the endlessness of flying out West from Europe, though these flights are becoming somewhat more tolerable as the aircraft servicing the routes have become newer and more efficient. However, I realise that these flights pale into insignificance when compared to other routes.

Last week an Airbus A380 of the Emirates airline made what is believed to be the longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight by distance (the record for duration is still held by a Quantas flight from Dallas to Sydney which took 16 hours and 55 minutes). However, this could be eclipsed by Emirates commencing a route from Dubai to Panama City (due to launch this month but postponed - again - until next year) that will clock in at 17 hours and 35 minutes, though this is still shorter by distance than the Auckland trip.

New planes with better engine technology are enabling these marathon flights, which no doubt benefit the bottom lines of the big carriers, such as the rapidly expanding Emirates and Qatar Airways, as well as Australia's Quantas which, through geographic necessity, has always had to be at the end of the longest routes on Earth.

But what do they do for the passengers? Given how the business of air travel is all about balancing profits with the passenger experience, the thought of spending three-quarters of a whole day crammed into an economy class seat fills me with mortal dread. Cabin innovations on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A380 and A350 are supposed to improve cabin pressure, air circulation and even ambient light, but from my own experience, nothing can relieve the strain of being squashed into economy class rows, where the legroom has grown ever-tighter, and even the number of seats per row has increased.

Unless you have a generous employer or are one of those air miles nerds who apparently can fly anwhere in a premium cabin by some form of black art, long-haul really is not fun. And as economy class sections become more cramped, the armrest duels, the seat-recline mind games and the awkward social etiquette of getting past (or clambering over) two or even four other sleeping passengers to get to the toilet during a very long-haul flight is the stuff of nightmares.

Twitter/Christopher Adams

The New Zealand Herald's Christopher Adams live blogged from the Emirates Dubai-Auckland flight to see how his fellow passengers were holding up, though he admits that he had booked into business class, making any immediate drawbacks around him of the sixteen-and-a-half-hour flight a clear case of 'First World problems'.

Exploring the economy cabin, Adams didn't see any greater suffering than any other long-haul flight. The 500-seat A380 wasn't completely full, either, possibly the result of fuel economy weight restrictions (Emirates will fly the smaller Boeing 777 on this route on a regular basis).

This begs the question of whether such a non-stop journey of endurance would be popular to begin with. Super-long distance flights, such as those from European cities to Australia or New Zealand, get broken up by layovers in Dubai or Doha. Some choose to stop off for a day in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Personally, I'd say that was sensible, even if it did cut down on time at the eventual destination. All I know is that if I ever brave the journey Down Under - a trip fraught with claustrophobia on the way and the world's deadliest things that could kill you when you get there - I could never do the journey in one go, even if the technology existed for an airliner to fly non-stop.

As it is, there is no shortage of routes, notably starting out in the Middle East, which clock in at over 8,000 miles, and which require supreme stamina to endure in all but the most luxurious of flying classes. Perhaps its no surprise, then, how airlines like Emirates and Qatar, with their reputation for opulance in the premium seats, can sustain flying the current crop of jumbo jets from Dubai to Auckland, Los Angeles or Houston. These airlines advertise themselves as being luxury experiences - one has a TV commercial suggesting that your travel itinerary could take you to New York before whisking yourself off to a tropical island in the South Pacific, before you then travel to Dubai. Clearly, this particular airline's advertising agency had no demographic in mind that would fly anything less than first class, because putting in the miles like that in the cattle section would surely not be any fun at all.

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.