Getting through a UK airport is sometimes the worst part of a holiday. Is it getting any better? It has become so serious that Travel Counsellors has launched a campaign: on the website www.ukairportdelays.co.uk they ask people to register their experiences online. The idea is to put pressure on the airports to ensure we have a less stressful experience when we are going on holiday.
At the start of the year we saw some relaxing of the security regulations. For example, at some airports – but not all – you are allowed to take more than one piece of hand luggage through security. We are told the situation will improve at Heathrow when Terminal 5 opens at the end of March.
Do you think that will really improve things? This £4.3-billion project will be used by most British Airways flights, which at the moment are scattered around Terminals 1, 3 and 4. So it will give easier access to the runways, which should mean that there are fewer delays. But there are bound to be a few teething problems – so it’s a case of hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
What about biometric security? An important part of the new facilities is to have your photograph and your fingerprints taken if you are travelling on a domestic flight. It may soon be possible to have your boarding pass on a mobile or Blackberry. You will have a two-dimensional barcode text on your mobile that will allow you to get on to your flight. But that’s not going to happen overnight.
What’s the news of the new Airbus A380? It will probably be touching down at Heathrow at the end of March. To begin with, it will only be flying between Heathrow and Singapore. But within two or three years this vast plane, the biggest civil airliner ever built, will become a familiar sight over the skies of London. Heathrow is the only UK airport it is going to serve at the moment.
And what about the Boeing 787? That’s a smaller aircraft that will start flying in 2009. It will enable people to fly directly, for example, from Bristol to Cape Town without changing planes along the way. It’s a low-cost aircraft in terms of its operating efficiency and it will provide some of those point-to-point journeys such as Manchester to Mumbai or Birmingham to Bali.
Will there be any improvements in the in-flight experience? Premium Economy class has been around for some years but is getting more and more popular. The idea is that you get an extra bit of comfort, which on a long flight could be very important, in return for a couple of hundred pounds each way. The Australian airline Qantas has launched it, following BA, Virgin Atlantic and others, and more and more airlines will follow suit.
However if you are flying out of the UK it means you pay an extra £40 in air passenger duty. For something like a London-Singapore return, I would recommend you fly out in normal Economy, as you are excited to be going on holiday anyway. But on the return flight you just want to get the journey over with, so treat yourself to Premium Economy, which means you arrive back relatively fresh.
Alison Rice, Travel Writer
Some of the content of the magazine refers to flights or prices from the UK. At Travel Counsellors Ireland we can source flights from Ireland and provide full quotes in Euros. Please call me for latest availability and prices.
