Civilised air travel? Pigs might fly

Does anyone actually enjoy flying     any more? I know I don’t. I realised recently, while anxiously repacking my tiny carry-on case with its cache of toiletries dribbled into miniature bottles, that travelling with an airline now feels a bit like going on holiday with a friend who — just beneath the surface — actually hates you. With every trip, it seems, airlines grow angrier and stingier, stripping away any remaining perks and then making us stump up to buy them all back. Their profits have grown fat on the commerce of small differentiations, micro-transactions around fragile scraps of sanity and time. On the budget airline easyJet, for example, you are allowed one piece of cabin baggage, but no handbag. That is unless, of course, you have splashed out on easyJet Plus (annual membership £199) which will graciously permit said handbag — and its precious cargo of passports, boarding cards, money and keys — to travel by your side.