Suzanne Harrington: Budget airlines have taught us something about travelling light
Thank you, budget airlines, for teaching me — the hard way — the fine art of travelling light.
My boyfriend and I are going on holiday, escaping Brexit Britain. Yay! We are counting down the days. There’s nothing like planning a trip in 2022 — the anxious hourly scanning of our feeds as EasyJet flights continue to (metaphorically, lawyers) fall from the skies; the relentless reports of package holidays cancelled fifteen minutes before departure, as police hover around terminals to deal not with terrorism, but with passengers melting down from disappointment.
Will we get away, or spend our holidays eating airport sandwiches on an airport floor, before turning around and going home again? Will our flights be overbooked, so that we end up re-enacting a / mash-up in the departure lounge? Will we get shoved on a coach and diverted to another airport six hours away?
And even if we get to where we have paid to get to, will our luggage get there too, or will it travel independently to a different time zone, if it ever leaves the ground? Whoever said travel broadens the mind probably didn’t mean the bit of the mind that deals with stress and anxiety, yet here we are, turning up at airports like eager passport-clutching lemmings, stupidly optimistic that holidays are still a thing.
I’m not taking any chances — that is, I’m not taking any luggage. One small bag, to shove under the seat in front. In that bag there will be a Kindle, a laptop, lipstick, a swimsuit, a few items of clothing rolled more tightly than vacuum-packed sausages, and a week’s worth of contact lenses so I can see where I’m going. Everything else — shoes, phone, sunglasses — will be on my person. Nobody is going to lose my luggage, or charge me extra for accidentally sending it to Reykjavik.
Inside my head, I wage a tiny secret war with the budget airlines’ convoluted hierarchy of baggage rules; do I really want to pay more just so an additional pair of sandals can travel in the overhead locker? Do I want to risk waiting forlornly for hours at a carousel for a wheelie-case full of holiday clothes that (a) I probably won’t wear and (b) may already be enjoying a welcome cocktail at Reykjavik International, as I fly south towards the equator? No. I do not. Thank you, budget airlines, for teaching me — the hard way — the fine art of travelling light.
Not so my BF, who will be trundling through the concourse dragging not just a suitcase the size of a family car, but also a family of primary school-aged children whom he has sired. Off they will go to an all-you-can-eat destination in the Med, with splash pools and a Kids Club and all the shouty, noisy fun. They asked me if I wanted to go with them, but tragically I couldn’t because I am going to a different hot country alone to spend a week on a yoga mat with other adults. So long, suckers. I mean, bon voyage, darling!
