DOES anyone remember when air travel was considered glamorous?

I do, vaguely. Not exactly the flying boats and BOAC or the heyday of Pan Am, but I do remember my first flight - from Edinburgh (or maybe it was Glasgow) to Belfast.

I remember listening intently to the safety messages from the stewardess (in the days before it became politically correct to neuter stewards and stewardesses to "flight attendants".) I remember every change of pitch of the engine or graunch and groan of the undercarriage making my palms sweaty with fear. And I remember with delight peeling open the hot - hot! - meal in its funny little box, tucking in with a real metal knife and fork, drinking my water out of a real glass.

Well of course, things have changed. No metal knives and forks for security reasons. No glass. Or rarely. The brilliant airline wheeze of serving "wraps" or "panini" - posh names for sandwiches which taste like salted beer-mats.

The flights I get backwards and forwards these days from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow have all the romance of taking the bus from Clydebank to Yoker, and maybe that’s how I should look on them. A convenient and nowadays not so expensive way of getting around.

THE trouble is that with the so-called budget carriers you expect nothing, and therefore are rarely disappointed. But when you travel in what is laughingly called a "full-service carrier", you might expect something a little better. That’s a mistake.

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