Hurry Up and Wait

I have just taken a flight with Ryanair. Wait! Let me stop you there. This is not one of THOSE articles. In fact, the plane upon which I was flying was beyond reproach. It was clean and tidy. Despite trying to sell me tea, coffee, snacks, and perfume for the duration of the flight, the staff were polite and friendly. I had plenty of legroom and a window seat. And to cap it all, there was an empty seat to my left, allowing me to stretch out even further.

So no. This is not an anti-Ryanair rant. This is an anti-modern airline travel rant.

I was flying from Prague to London Stansted following a business trip. I used the Ryanair app to track my flight and to find my gate, and that too worked perfectly.

But then it began.

I arrived at the gate and found a horde of other passengers sitting, variously, on window ledges and the floor in what I can only describe as a departure gate antechamber, because the gate was not yet manned. This was a little surprising since the flight and its passengers did not just materialise. This flight was surely planned and scheduled months in advance.

After what felt like an age but was probably more like ten minutes, we were invited into another area where our bags and electronic devices were scanned. This took a while because, once again, nobody was actually manning the X-ray machines…