Flying sucks
Almost enough to ruin the wonderful experience of going away.
It’s half past four in the morning and I’m on my second train heading to the airport to head to my mum’s for the holidays. Before I arrive back in rainy Surrey, I’ll have to wait at least ninety minutes at an airport before sitting for at least two hours on an aeroplane, and then have to catch another train to my local station. Oh, and then get picked up from the station, either by paying for a taxi or waiting for my brother to come and collect me. Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’ve left something extremely important at home, even though I’ve checked everything a thousand times. Oh, and I’m bored out my mind. (Bored enough to write this piece, even.)
All this just to spend time with my family over Christmas. (Be grateful, Mum.) That’s not to mention that I’ve not slept tonight for fear of sleeping through my alarm and not actually being able to catch my flight. (I’ve suffered insomnia since my teenage years, but when I’m out, you can’t wake me up.) And by the time I get back to Berlin in a week’s time, I’ll have spent over two hundred quid on travelling. If I’d wanted to stay longer – which I did, by the way – my travel expenses would have been even higher. I understand it’s more expensive to travel over Christmas, but give me a break – I’m a student, for crying out loud.
A huge problem with travelling is the expense which, as a student or a working-class person, can make going away even once a year unaffordable. You can argue it’s a luxury, but if it were, why do so many manage to do it – and why are others forced to take their children to Butlins for a soul-destroying long weekend because plane ticket prices tripled during half term? Not to mention that the pound, since Brexit, is somewhere down there by your feet when it comes to exchange rates.
And then if you do fly, you’re destroying the environment. Fair enough – you are. But most of the people I know dislike flying and would much rather take trains for shorter haul trips – that is, if train prices weren’t astronomical. Shit, I’d love to take a train back to the UK instead of flying – I love being on the train. But it’s an impossibility. There’s something to be said for people taking responsibility for the environment into their own hands and deciding not to fly when they can help it to mitigate the current climate crisis, but the problem isn’t that people are going on holiday. The problem is that airline companies refuse to make their services more environmentally friendly, despite the fact that the solutions exist, and because of the nature of our economic system (Marxist James rears his revolutionary head) people are going to travel the cheapest way they can precisely so they are able to get away from their mind-numbing daily slog for five days. It’s the structure which needs to change, the nature of flying, because you aren’t going to convince a white collar family which works its arse off all year just to afford a weekend away in Spain to stop flying. It’ll tell you to stick it. Which is selfish, but telling: people are going to fly, so how flying works needs to change – that is, become extremely green.
That’s the socialist stuff out the way. (Phew.) Last weekend I went away with my girlfriend to Ljubljana. We had the most wonderful, romantic, Christmassy weekend together in a surprisingly lovely capital city in the former Soviet Bloc. (Or, kinda. Yugoslavia sort of did its own thing.) The lights hanging in the capital were gorgeous; we just caught the one weekend of snow the city was expecting, so the views from the castle were a magnificent whitewash of old buildings and newer Plattenbaus; and we spent most of our time telling each other how good a time we were having and how happy we were.
But in order to get the most out of our time there, we had to get up at three in the morning for our flight, meaning when we landed at around eight we were absolutely pooped. Our first day, while lovely, was spent sleepily checking out cafes and markets, not really able to enjoy the sights because we were utter zombies. We booked the flights, obviously, so we knew what we were getting into – but this piece is about why travelling can suck, regardless of whose fault it is. Plus, they were the cheapest flights, and if our economic system was a bit fairer... (Down, Marxist James!)
In the end, we had a five-hour nap and all was well. But had we had the money to get the train, we would have slept a bit and been less knackered, and we’d have felt less guilty about destroying the environment. Our holiday wasn’t a necessity, of course, so we brought our guilt on ourselves – but that’s exactly the point. We shouldn’t have to. True, our sleeping problem wouldn’t have been mitigated by an entirely carbon-free flying experience, but my conscience certainly would. And a holiday is more than a luxury: when you’re working twenty hours a week on top of a pretty heavy-going Master’s degree, with books to read, and doing your best to stumble through learning a new language, all the while eating reasonably well and attempting to stay fit, you still have to at least try and have some kind of a life around it all. Getting away from it all is an essential part of that. The other solution is to make it less stressful, and less of a chore, not being away – and that means making some changes with how our society functions and the pressures it places on people in terms of careers, as well as making everything a little bit more equal monetarily. Oh, and make airport security faster and airports less like shopping malls. I don’t want any aftershave, thanks. And let me take more than just one rucksack-sized cabin bag on board, please, EasyJet. Is that all too much to ask?
