Flight of fancy(fulness)

One of the most useless travel ‘must haves’ has to be the faux business class offered on short-haul flights, rail travel etc, although it has to be said that some long-haul flight share some of the irony treating travel as something it plainly isn’t.

Fake boarding the plane. They call out business-class, or in the case of the budget airlines, idiot-class, to board first, followed by women with young perambulated offspring. What this means is, instead of reading a little longer in the comfort of the airport lounge and its slatted, haemorrhoid-inducing seating, you are rushed on to the plane ahead of the other passengers.

Now I appreciate the purchased-teeth, four-wheel-drive, electric gate brigade from, say Cheshire, love strutting their stuff in airport lounges, safe in the knowledge that the remaining cattle class passengers are fully aware they have paid for the privilege of being referred to as business class and are called to board the plane before anyone else.

However, by boarding first, all they have in fact paid extra for, is, a ticket that enables them to sit in a cramped seat for 45 minutes longer than the remainder of the passengers. And if it is a fully-booked flight, and the Cheshire passenger is seated in an aisle seat, they have an enjoyable hour or so of the proles brushing past them, or worse still, waiting in the aisle by their seat, reeking of beer, sweat or garlic, peering into the Cheshire’s phone or tablet screen as they wait to get to their own seat!

And what the Cheshires have totally forgotten, while strutting their implanted-teeth stuff, is that they are actually only showing off to a group of likeminded passengers who have opted to travel budget to save money. So all in reality they are doing is showing off that they couldn’t afford the regular scheduled air fare either. Or simply that where there’s muck there’s money, with not a brain between them.

Yes, showing off on a budget airline seems to be as pointless as the initial, selfless act itself of paying the budget airline for a premium service, as the words “premium” and “RyanAir” (other equally dismal budget airlines are sometimes available) simply do not go together in the same chapter, let alone the same sentence.