The starting point is where you are

After a month of June in which I had to spend some part of every week away from home, it’s a relief to have a month of relative calm with minimal travel.

In fact, the first time I’m going to have to take a flight again is only at the beginning of August, when I plan to fly back to England from Spain. So I decided to call up the British Airways app this morning and see about booking the trip.

What amused me is that the default screen came up with the option of flying from Glasgow to Austin (Texas) this very day, flying back tomorrow. Across the Atlantic and half of the United States one day, and back the next? Gracious living that certainly isn’t.

Can we make sure you’re at least taking me
from where I am, to where I want to go?

But I found the selection of route most amusing because I’m nowhere near Glasgow. Indeed, I’m in Spain, not in Scotland at all. As for Austin, it would leave me a lot further from where I need to go than I am now.

Indeed, since I want to get to London, I’d be a lot closer if I stayed in Glasgow than if I went to Austin. If, that is, I were in Glasgow at all. Which I’m not.

In fact, I loved the idea that I would even struggle to get to Glasgow in the first place, in order to catch the flight to Austin. I mean, if I wanted to get to Austin, (which I don’t), why wouldn’t I start from where I am now, rather than travelling somewhere else first?

All of which put me in mind of one of my favourite stories, one I’ve told more than once before right here. It’s the story of the tourist in an Irish village who asks a local if he’s going the right way for Dublin.

“Dublin?” replies the old man, “if I were going to Dublin, I wouldn’t start from here.”

It’s mainly as a metaphor that I like that joke. Every time someone starts a sentence with the words “If only…” I think of it: “If only we’d invested in the product last year…”; “if only we’d taken out insurance sooner…”; “if only we’d reserved a table…”

We are where we are. If we still want to get where we were planning on going, we’re going to have to start from here. An invaluable piece of wisdom which isn’t always immediately obvious to us.

But my experience with BA today suggested that the story’s has its value at the literal level too.

If I’m going to book a flight, I’d rather it took me where I actually wanted to go.

And it would help if it suggested I start from where I actually am.

Just a thought, BA. Maybe a small enhancement to the app?

They order these things better in the US. Or possibly not

It is said that at its foundation, it was hoped that Canada would combine French culture, with the British political system and American knowhow. Unfortunately, the country has managed to bring together American culture, the French political system and British knowhow.

Ah, American knowhow. The country’s celebrated for it. As well as its culture of service. And generally it fully deserves both reputations. But, as I discovered on this trip across the pond, not always. 

Imagine, for instance, an increasingly cashless society. Even the smallest purchases can be made by card. An ice cream, a taxi, a meal. So much more convenient than having to carry cash, which you can do nothing about if it’s stolen, and which supports a whole parallel economy evading tax. Clearly the way to go in the future.

But that’s not the States. That’s Sweden. I made the mistake of drawing out a little Swedish cash on an early trip to the country and two years on it’s still just burning a hole in my wallet.

In the US, on the other hand, I went to one restaurant which refused to take anything but cash. A fine restaurant but just what are they up to? Back in England, that kind of behaviour would excite suspicions of money laundering.

Then there was the Café that claimed it took cards, until it came to paying.

“I’m so sorry, our card machine is down,” they sorrowfully announced. Though I’m not sure the sorrow was authentic. Fortunately, there was an ATM nearby; less fortunately, it was one of those that indulges in the scandalous practice of charging you for access to your own money.

But it wasn’t either of those experiences that provided me the most powerful insight into the occasional technological and service blips in US life.

I had to get from New York to Austin, in Texas. And things weren’t looking good. A major snowstorm had been threatened for the North Eastern states. There were snowploughs travelling up and down the streets. The buses even had snow chains on their back tyres.

Would my plane take off at all? These were anxious moments.

It was with some relief that I discovered that the weather forecast had been less than accurate, at least for New York. A friend suggested that this might be an effect of the partial government shutdown – staff were perhaps not turning up at the meteorological service. I can just imagine juniors who’ve missed a pay cheque getting together in the office and saying, “hey, let’s give the New Yorkers a shock, shall we?”

New York. At the time the worst snow was forecast

I travelled out to the airport feeling superior to my colleagues stuck in Boston. This is a bad frame of mind. I try not to be superstitious but I can’t help a slight queasiness when I get a little too cocksure. That strikes me as a bit of a lightning conductor for bad Karma.

And so it proved.

As we were boarding, the pilot announced that he wanted us in our seats fast as we needed to be moving away from the stand by eight o’clock. And we rose to the occasion. We were all seated in minutes, well before his deadline. 

At which point, he sat on the stand for a further 25 minutes.

Eventually, he began to taxi towards the runway. In, I’d have to say, rather a lackadaisical way. There were frequent stops, as though the plane was running out of breath. The engines frequently whined, as though trying to reach high speed, while in fact moving at what felt more like a walking pace.

In time, however, we reached the runway. Or rather, not in time. The pilot came back on the PA system.

“We tried our best,” he told us, never a statement that encourages listeners to expect a happy continuation, “but we’re one minute too late. We can’t now get to Austin within the maximum flying time permitted. We have to go back and wait for a new crew.”

Which we duly did. Waiting with different degrees of patience in the terminal building for a further four hours. We took off at 2:00 in the morning, six hours late – a delay significantly longer than the flight itself.

For someone who travels by air a lot in Europe, this came as a disagreeable reminder of times gone by. It’s been many years since I experienced such a delay on a flight, except for circumstances well beyond the control of the airlines – terrible weather or someone flying a drone near the airport, for instance.

We tried to get rest on the flight. Which put me in mind of a line from Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day:

Sleeping on planes – you know. Ruins the complexion. From the inside.

Somehow, that sentiment seems to encapsulate things perfectly. Sleeping on a flight just gnaws away at you, and it is indeed from deep inside you. Not a comfortable way to spend time.

And not the most glowing tribute to the levels of service provided by a US airline.

Still, it was only a discomfort. And a useful object lesson in the fact that it isn’t just severe weather that disrupts air travel but human ineptitude – in this case, running services on far too tight a margin for safety – can be just as lamentable. 

And it even happens in the US.

But I’m not complaining. I don’t live in Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. I know nothing of real suffering. What I went through was an inconvenience not a tragedy. Besides, it was a pleasantly ironic insight into things transatlantic.

So, if anything, I’m grateful…