I should qualify that statement by saying that some aspects of air travel are justifiably highly rated, like the ability to fly across seas and oceans without the need to throw up in a boat, and the utterly fantastic views you get if you're lucky to have a window seat and it's not too cloudy. I flew back from Schiphol to London City Airport today and the views were excellent. The pilot even flew directly over my house, but that was really annoying because it meant I couldn't actually see it. However, the Dutch coast, the North Sea, even Essex, all looked almost magical from high above. And veering round Canary Wharf in a 40-seater Fokker is exactly the type of experience that most people would normally pay good money for in theme parks.
The aspect of air-travel that's over-rated is the time it takes to complete your journey. My actual flight from Amsterdam today took just under an hour, which was excellent. However, my journey from Amsterdam took a lot longer than an hour, and that's where the problem with air travel lies. Today's aircraft may well be able to speed you from one side of the Atlantic to the other in hours, or across the English Channel in minutes, but getting yourself through the airport is a different matter altogether.
• First there's the journey to the airport itself. Airports are never built anywhere near where you live, because if they were you'd never have agreed to buy a house anywhere nearby in the first place. Travelling to the airport therefore involves either a long train journey or three, or else a long drive so that you can park miles away from the terminal building and sit on a courtesy coach that meanders round all the car parks before eventually reaching its destination.
• It's important to arrive at your airport well in advance of the official flight time so that you have sufficient time to go through the official airport charade. At London City Airport this doesn't take too long but at most larger airports, like Schiphol, there are a lot more people around and everything takes much longer.
• You usually have to stand in line for ages to get your baggage checked in because there are never enough airline staff at the check-in desks. When you do finally reach the front of the queue they have to run you through the official pre-flight script just in case you're a guilt-ridden terrorist who's going to blow their cover by confessing to carrying nail-scissors on board in order to incite a hijacking.
• Then you get to queue again before you can pass through the electronic security gates, where something invariably beeps and you end up being frisked by the least glamorous of all the security guards.
• There's then an additional chance to queue so that someone foreign can laugh at your passport photo, followed by the interminable wait in the departure lounge. There's nothing here worth buying that you couldn't have bought while you were actually on holiday, so most people end up forking out for an overpriced coffee instead just to make the hours pass by faster.
• Eventually you'll be ushered through to your departure gate, which is merely another opportunity to sit down and wait but with a clearer view of the plane you haven't boarded yet.
• If you're really lucky there's a bus to catch out to your plane, which means yet another wait while the last passenger is dragged forcibly from the duty-free boutique.
• Then there's the extended wait on board the plane while the last passenger arrives, then the flight crew have to wait for clearance to take-off, and finally you all get taken on a fifteen minute taxiing tour of the airport before reaching the designated runway.
This entire checking-in and boarding process can take three hours or more, during which time you may have travelled no more than 500 yards. Only then comes the fast part of the journey, the flight itself. Miles are at last covered in minutes, which is the way air travel should be. However, you may experience a distinct sinking feeling on landing because there are still another 500 yards to cover from the plane to the arrivals hall. First there's the wait to be allowed to disembark from the plane, then the incredibly long walk down some endless corridors, then the interminable wait for your baggage to be the last one onto the carousel, and finally your random selection for a complete baggage search by the fat bloke in the Customs area. Even then you still face the long journey from the airport to the place in the country you're actually trying to get to, and that's tons more hours added to your journey.
I was lucky today because I managed to get from my hotel in Amsterdam to my front door in four hours flat. Sounds good, but 200 miles in 4 hours is a less-than-impressive average of 50 miles an hour. Never, ever, let it be said that air travel is fast. Safe, yes, but fast, never.
