Travelling can either be torturous or a very pleasant experience depending on your mind-set at the time. Some people see the travelling as part of the holiday experience and they take no notice of flight delays, waiting in airports, security checks etc. Others grind their teeth and mumble away to themselves until they reach their destination, cursing their decision to leave their home in the first place.
There are many factors that can determine how pleasant or otherwise the journey is likely to be. Things like your travelling companion, your fellow passengers, mode of transport and the purpose of the trip. The chances are that you will be much more tolerant if you are heading off on a holiday than you will be if you are going to some event that you have little or no interest in.
I recently travelled back home from a visit to Cyprus with a friend of mine, John O’Connor. We have made this trip previously without too much inconvenience or hardship but this time was a little different. While we were waiting in the departure lounge in Larnaca, there was a guy using his mobile phone and it sounded like he was talking to his wife. He was using face time so he had the phone out in front of him and he was staring intently at the screen. He was shouting into the phone for half an hour, oblivious to the fact that everyone could hear the entire conversation. Normally that drives me nuts but this guy was so bad that everybody was just laughing at him.
We were due to leave Larnaka at about 8pm on an Easyjet flight and we were expected to arrive in Gatwick at about 1am. There was a delay of about an hour that pushed our predicted arrival time back to 2am. Not a great start but we just got on with it.
We got to our seats and there were people already sitting in them so that had to be resolved. Then there were three people seated behind us and I suspect that a certain amount of alcohol had been consumed by them. One of them was a female with a very loud voice and an even louder laugh. She also had a lot of stamina because she never stopped yapping. That is the kind of thing that can make your journey longer and more uncomfortable than it needs to be and in this case if it had been possible to open a window I would happily have sent her on her way.
When we arrived at Gatwick Airport the plane seemed to land very heavily and suddenly the landing was aborted and we found ourselves back up amongst the clouds again. While I am not normally a nervous passenger I must admit that I was a little unnerved at this turn of events. The atmosphere on the aircraft changed after that and you could feel the tension in the air. Arm rests were being gripped a bit tighter. I’m not sure how long we were circling around before we made a second attempt at landing and this time, while again it seemed like a heavy contact with the runway, we stayed on the ground.
Our next leg of the journey was with Ryanair from Gatwick to Cork which was scheduled to leave at 12.15pm the following day. The queueing in Gatwick at the gate for the Ryanair flight was a little chaotic and there was confusion among the passengers heading for Istanbul, Malaga and Cork as to who was to queue where. When we eventually reached the departure gate it was obvious that this particular flight had very little chance of leaving on time. We also realised that all hand luggage that had wheels was being tagged to go in the hold which didn’t make a lot of sense to us.
The whole advantage of travelling with hand luggage only is that you get to avoid the business of going to the carousel and waiting there to collect bags. This saves a lot of time if you can manage with hand luggage only. There was no explanation offered for this decision and we were sent on our merry way to take our seats on the plane. At 12.45pm it looked as if we were about to take off but we were in for another little surprise.
We sat on the plane for a further 80 miniutes while the cabin crew scurried up and down the aisle doing lots of counting and pointing. It’s no exaggeration to say that we must have been counted at least a dozen times but nobody thought it was worth their while to advise us as to why we were sitting there like sheep being counted by a demented shepherd. From what we could gather they either had one passenger too many or they had lost one but in any event the paperwork and the number of passengers on board the aircraft were not tallying to the satisfaction of the counters. You would imagine that if you know the amount of seats on a plane, then by simply deducting the number of empty seats from the total should give you the number of passengers on the aircraft. But maybe that’s too simple.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but you don’t really want to be sitting on an aeroplane for any longer than you have to. Space in modern aircraft is at a premium and the seating doesn’t allow for much room. The seats, particularly in the low budget airlines, are not designed to be as comfortable as your recliner at home, so if you sit in them for long enough your bum goes numb. And then they tell you to have a nice flight, who are they kidding?