Leave the Jet Planes August 27, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, Green in the City, Politics, Travel , trackbackThe trip to Pisa last week brought me face to face with the new security restrictions at airports and, for the first time, I find myself seriously reluctant to fly. Guilt has been mounting because of the impact flying has on the environment but travel, and my love of Greece and Italy, have always won.
Its certainly not fear of terrorism that’s done it, but the sheer misery of flying now. Rather than checking in online, and arriving at the airport less than an hour before the flight leaves, then waltzing off at the other end to bypass the luggage queues and get the first taxi off the rank, on Friday night, I queued for forty five minutes behind people with tiny bags to get to one of three security checkpoints open out of the six available. I watched people being told to throw away cosmetics, and a little four year old girl being frisked. The flight was about an hour late. On the way back, it was a similar story. Although Pisa airport were allowing normal amounts of hand luggage, they were not allowing liquids of any form through. That flight was just under two hours late.
The DTO, with their over-zealous regulations, and BAA with their obvious lack of contingency planning have done what fear of climate change has failed to do, and, I suspect, destroyed the short break market. All the airline investment in online checkin and enough handbaggage to go away for the weekend have come to nothing. The many people who take two or three weekends away a year may not be kicking up a fuss or cancelling their flights, but I bet they’re not booking them either.
Anecdotal evidence suggests business travellers are also reconsidering, and rethinking the practicality of trains for 4-6 hour trips, rather than just the very short ones. If flights are consistently delayed, and you need to be at the airport two hours before departure rather than one, Amsterdam is suddenly closer by train than by plane.
Longer holidays are probably not affected. If you were already going to check luggage in, and going for a couple of weeks, then an extra hour or two doesn’t matter so much. I suspect long-haul across the Atlantic, where you’re still not allowed to take a bottle of water even if it was bought airside, will become less popular for families.
The Green in me is pleased - air travel needs to be curtailed and if fear of climate change wasn’t enough to stop me then it wasn’t stopping many people. I will miss it though.
Technorati Tags: BAA, airport security, environment
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