By BARRIE MAHONEY features@algarveresident.com
Barrie Mahoney was a teacher, headteacher and school inspector in the UK, as well as a reporter in Spain, before moving to the Canary Islands as a newspaper editor. He is still enjoying life in the sun as a writer and author.
The day has been silent. We live quite close to the airport and are used to seeing the many flights arriving each day with their cargos of white, pallid passengers, released from the tight grip of a Northern European winter, looking forward to the comforting warmth of the Canarian sun.
Often, we see the same passengers a week later at the airport, this time in the departures queues, looking browner and healthier, if not sadder, as they prepare for their weary flights home.
Today was different. There were no queues of frustrated travellers and irritating tour representatives herding their reluctant passengers into long queues to await their turns at the check-in desks.
The waiting area was empty. The glaring departures board screamed the one word that no one wanted to read, ‘CANCELLED’.
The volcanic ash from Iceland has done its worst for our islands, already teetering from the effects of recession. Hoteliers, bar and restaurant owners and shopkeepers, all looking forward to the heady days of a springtime tourist revival, shook their heads as they shared and commiserated together the events of one of the worst weeks in the tourist business on the islands.
The planes had stopped coming and in their hand-to-mouth business, so too had the hard earned currency that would help them to keep their businesses open for another season.
Back in the airport, I spotted activity around the customer service desk of one of the low cost airlines.
“I need to get home before then, my son’s medication has run out,” cried the grey haired mother with her disabled son standing silently at her side.
“We’ll give you a flight back next week, but other than that, you are on your own,” came the harsh reply to one desperate family, surrounded by push chairs, a crying baby and a screaming toddler.
“You pay nothing and you get f**k all,” came the words of an angry young man clutching a rucksack. “I should have known. I will never fly with this bunch of cowboys again.”
The customers of another low cost airline – the one with the smart orange tracksuits – fared rather better. This airline appeared to be treating their customers with the respect that they deserved.
Not only were they booking passengers onto alternative flights, but they were also putting them up in hotels. They may not have been where they wanted to be, but at least their clients would not have to spend a night on the beach.
The local television crew arrived to film the antics and the anger outside the office of the low cost airline. The passengers instinctively turned their backs against their cameras – after all, why should their misery be the stuff of the evening’s television entertainment?
I left the airport, disturbed and saddened and began to muse upon a world without the precious, noisy, fuel guzzling machines that dominate our planet. Our reliance upon these monsters of the sky, carrying their bellyfuls of passengers to exotic destinations is something that we all take for granted.
Once they stop flying, even for a few days, holidays and finances are ruined, perishable goods such as fresh fruit, vegetables, food items and flowers lay rotting in warehouses in Las Palmas, London and Nairobi and national economies begin to crumble.
Maybe one day in the future the planes really will stop flying. Children will gather to hear tales of giant flying metal birds carrying people to destinations in the sun.
Will we also be telling them of tales of complaining passengers, sitting in silence watching noisy cartoons on large screens, who have only paid the price of the latest best seller for a ticket to a far away destination? Will we tell them about the food and drink in plastic trays and beakers and the complaints that it is not as good as they could get in their local takeaways? What about the planes themselves? Will we visit them in museums and both admire and loathe them for the way in which they changed our planet forever?
In a week of chaos and inconvenience, maybe we should be grateful for the silence, and the opportunity that the volcanic ash from Iceland has given us to reflect upon a world without these whales of the sky, and begin to imagine a flight-free world in their place?
If you enjoyed this article, take a look at Barrie’s websites: www.barriemahoney.com and www.thecanaryislander.com or read his latest novel, ‘Journeys and Jigsaws’ (ISBN: 9781843865384)
If you enjoyed this article, take a look at Barrie’s websites: www.barriemahoney.com and www.thecanaryislander.com or read his latest novel, ‘Journeys and Jigsaws’
