Flaps

A pre-dawn departure from Covent Garden to reach Heathrow on time. I was so tired I dozed off on board and missed take-off as the plane left in the direction of Nairobi. When I woke up the pilot was announcing something about wing flaps not retracting, hence why we were circling over London. Apparently flaps cannot remain extended for an eight hour flight to Kenya.

Then we had to wait for a decision on whether we would dump fuel over the English Channel (the idea sounded terrible, environmentally) or land overweight. Of course for safety reasons we were advised to do the former, and passengers by the windows (myself included) were advised we could watch the wing tip nozzles dump the fuel. ‘You will see what looks like smoke coming from the wing tips, but it’s vaporising fuel.’ The whole saga was quite depressing in terms of emissions; the only positive moment being the pilot’s use of the word jettison.

On landing the fire service had to inspect the brakes because it had been a fast landing, apparently with a touchdown speed 80 kilometres per hour faster than the norm. Then we sat around on board for a few hours as some engineers tinkered with the wing. Then we were given instructions to re-enter the terminal and rebook tickets. As we were piling off the pilot announced we should take our seats again as the engineers may have been on the cusp of a breakthrough. Then we sat around for longer and it was finally announced that the ‘last throw of the dice hasn’t worked’. I’m not sure we should be using such idioms around air travel.

Eventually I was put onto an Emirates flight, which was a fair result despite the delay as it has superior food, a vastly better film selection, and Andi Peters narrating some of the promo vids.

Whether it’s a personal shift or because the world is slowly crumbling into unserviceable systems, international travel has become such a draining hassle. This is said by someone who recognises he has the privilege to be able to do it. The post-Covid world has included a disproportionately high number of travel woes, which I summarise as a neoliberal global system starting to crack because of too many years of profit-making over service provision, underpinned by certain political regimes and decisions that have weakened regulation and accountability.

We are over a barrel in most of our dealings with corporations, yet we are barraged by positive marketing and messaging that leaves us believing that we need these companies and that they are not slowly bleeding us dry. One day the people will rise, although the uprising will come with conditions, as we’re now accustomed to a certain lifestyle, much of which can only be provided by corporates. So the uprising will happen, as long as the protestors can still Instagram live it and get a skinny caramel latte from Costa on the way.