Glamour of air travel in 2020

I started writing this en route from Ireland to South Africa while in transit at Europe’s fourth busiest airport, Frankfurt, simply because there was NOTHING else to do.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate, but I quickly exhausted the pleasures of the pharmacy, the sweet shop, and the bakery, with its four left-over buns.

That took a heady five minutes.

Everything else – from shops to bars to restaurants – was closed for lockdown. It was movie-set eerie, like an airport in North Korea with brightly-lit concourses built for crowds who never came.

The only diversions that remained were the vending machine – water or sanitiser, anyone? – and the toilets, where I went mostly so I could sit in a cubicle with my mask hooked off, breathing in the fresh lavatory air, with its perfume of disinfectant and poo.

Such is the glamour of air travel 2020.

My journey had started with the mandatory Covid-19 test two days previously – eye-watering even before the €180 (about R3 500) bill. The doctor probed my nostrils with a long swab.

“There seems to be a blockage,” she said, poking harder. “My brain?” I wondered.

Online check-in was mandatory, as were masks throughout the journey, so I took several disposable ones – sensible if you’re wearing them for 20 hours.

At Dublin airport – like Frankfurt, like OR Tambo – only passengers were allowed inside.

There were sanitiser stations everywhere. It was so quiet I zoomed through security, but beyond many shops and eateries were shuttered, there were no testers at duty-free.

However, Dublin was positively bustling compared to Frankfurt.

On boarding – a staggered process, like disembarkation – they handed out sanitiser wipes.

My first flight carried 29 people on a 180-seater plane.

My second had just 120 on a 360-capacity flight.

There were no in-flight magazines. The meal service gets staggered, and choice is reduced – what, no lemon in my G&T? – but it’s bliss, mainly because there’s a respite from the essential masks.

Naturally, you eat and drink r-e-a-l-l-y slowly.

But up in the air again, with the pink horizon and marbled earth and clouds like ic-ing, it’s easy to remember that the world is beautiful.

And now I’m home, at last.

Jennie Ridyard

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