Forty pounds to Florence. Thirty to Rome. Seventeen, absurdly, to Lisbon. I could fly to Barcelona tomorrow (£134.24 on Ryanair) for the price of a train home to Newcastle (£134.80). There’s something queasily decadent about the low cost of modern air travel.
This, plus environmental qualms, the sadism of airline websites and the school minibus atmosphere of the average Boeing 737 conspire to make cheap short-haul flights the least appreciated of modern conveniences.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ryanair’s notoriously unloveable chief executive, Michael O’Leary, warned of rising prices (up 25 per cent in the next five years) and submitted himself to stern questioning on the ethics of flying in an age of climate crisis. If affordable air travel ever disappears, we may
