As I gazed upon the first circle of hell, otherwise known as Stansted Airport, I felt as though I was witnessing a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with our hapless nation. Thousands of desperate flyers were left stranded across the UK earlier this week after what appeared to be another air traffic control cock up.
The utter confusion seemed to reflect the growing ineptitude inherent in so many of our institutions, where despite huge leaps in technology, nothing works, no one is accountable and no one cares. As the delicate tendrils of civil society withered around me, the thing I found most unnerving was the reaction of my fellow travellers.
Real people with real commitments were about to be abandoned by a system that no longer seemed to care
The long-suffering passengers onboard my cancelled flight to Bergerac were a good case in point. The charming civil servant sitting next to me had been looking forward to spending some precious time with her dying mother while an elderly French woman in the seat in front told me she had to get home for a vital operation. I was lucky; all I had to do was reschedule a travel writing assignment.
Meanwhile, real people with real commitments were about to be abandoned by a system that no longer seemed to care. Regardless of whose fault it was, there were no proper contingency plans in place. Those of us hoping to spend a few days in the Dordogne had already endured the now-standard two-hour delay before finally boarding one of Ryanair’s garish grief tubes. After a couple of hours sitting on the tarmac, our surly cabin crew ordered us to disembark with a barely audible apology. It was at this point I expected the aircraft to erupt in fury. Instead, we gathered our belongings and waited dutifully as they herded us back into a holding pen. I didn’t hear a single tut or mumbled f-word. The fact that none of us raised our voices or snarled at the cabin crew may have been admirable but I fear it masks a deeper, more chilling malaise.
I know we Brits are used to putting on a brave face but I sensed something much bleaker than our usual plucky resilience. An air of hopeless resignation hung over us as if we were all thinking the same thing: ‘Well, this is how it’s going to be from now on so may as well get used to it’. Then I thought, maybe that’s exactly what the Man wants us to think. Then I got angry.
Back in the seething underbelly of the airport, hundreds of other wastrels from dozens of abandoned aircraft gathered around a single official hoping for some answers. But as is so often the case with modern officialdom, all we got was bluster, inarticulacy and some half-learned platitudes. That’s if you could actually hear what he was saying above the deafening tannoy announcements. ‘Get a bloody megaphone’ someone hooted. From what I could gather, the man in the dirty fluorescent tunic was telling us to give up and go home. Someone reminded him that airlines have a duty to provide hotel accommodation for those who need it, but he said expecting that was probably pointless too.
‘To be honest,’ he began, ‘all the airport hotels will be booked out by now. But you could try to find another hotel somewhere else, I’m sure your airline will reimburse you.’ Really? You think? Earlier, they had promised us a flight and now, here we were, mid-afternoon, worrying about how we were going to get home. Many had travelled from the Midlands or further afield and yes, unbelievably all the trains out of Stansted had also been grounded due to – you guessed it – our old friend signal failure.
Again, none of the officials seemed to care because those responsible for making actual decisions were nowhere to be found. That’s because they are hidden away in glass boxes on the outskirts of Reading, assuming they exist at all.
By late afternoon, we were still in the dark and the airport staff had become increasingly tetchy and dismissive. When I asked a Ryanair official if there was any point in waiting for a transfer, he offered that most unhelpful of English retorts: ‘Haven’t got a clue, mate.’ And that, in a nutshell, is where we are as a country. Those supposedly in charge have zero authority and even less of a clue. Oh sure, they will often couch their cluelessness in obfuscation and kind speak, but that only makes those of us at the sharp end feel more despondent. We lose trust in our institutions, in authority and in hope itself.
Perhaps that’s why nobody I spoke to at the airport believed the official air traffic control line about a system malfunction. Why would they, when lies and cover-ups have become the norm? Others felt the chaos was synonymous with a country on the brink of self-destruction. Conspiratorial pessimism? Maybe, but when the very people we are supposed to trust can’t begin to help, why shouldn’t we feel pessimistic?
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