Being an agent, I have to organise travel on many different levels. Sometimes first class, sometimes business, sometimes leisure. In the space of a telephone call, I can go from “best there is” to “cheap as chips”, from long haul to short, from a simple there-and-back to a complicated itinerary of 15 or more flight sectors. Each booking needs the same amount of attention to detail, not to mention a certain mental agility with regard to tarvel planning, unique to travel agents.

Over the years, there have been many changes to air travel arrangements. The most relevant of which being the arrival of the low cost carrier. Althougth this arrival has brought cheap(er) air travel to the masses, for those that were used to the days of “get in early for a reasonable fare” – some changes have not been so wellcome.

In times past, if anything, you knew where you stood. To get a cheaper fare, you travelled over a weekend, you booked in advance. For a business person going to Europe, out on a Monday, back on a Tuesday, the best that he or she could hope for was a Eurobudget. We knew how much baggage we could take, we knew we would “get something on the ‘plane” and generally speaking, life went on. This all had to change. I don’t know the reason why, but it did.

Low cost airlines did not march over every airlines route map. They specialised in short haul stuff, holiday routes and in the case of RyanAir, opened up new routes that had never existed before. Despite this, the legacy airlines decided that they wanted a go at the low cost ethos – but for all the wrong reasons. Legacy airlines saw this simply as an opportunity to harvest more revenue and reduce such things as on-board service, without stopping to think about why people travelled with them in the first place – and one of the main reasons being that many passengers simply did not want the “low cost” ethos!

But that is not what I am on about, here. I want to talk about “proportionality”. What do I mean? This morning, I took my daughter to Luton Airport for the “… Where you truly whisked here from Paradise – Naaaah, Luton Airport” treatment. A trip to Palma. This trip had come about simply because a client had over 100 kilos of luggage and the easiest (and cheapest way, in this instance) was for the client to travel with 50 kilos and for her to go along with another 50, have a swim and a day in Palma and come home.

My first observation was that a luggage trolley cost £2. Now, certain low cost airlines will fly you to some places for 1 Euro. So, how can you pay 1 Euro for a flight and £2 (or 2 Euros) for a luggage trolley? Where is the “proportionality” in that? To put it another way, given the present £12 promotion of RyanAir, the cost of a trolley is 17% of the airfare. If you want to bypass the security queue another £3 and the minimum at the car park to see No1 daughter safely away £4.50. A total of 80% of the fare. There is more cost involved in using Luton Airport than in the cost of getting from Luton to Alicante. And do not forget that hidden in the cost of your ticket, under “taxes and charges” is the £8 UB tax – which is, basically, what you have already paid Luton Airport for, well, the privilege of using Luton Airport. This makes the cost of simply using Luton Airport more than some fares from Luton Airport.

I don’t know about you, but I like finality on pricing. I want to buy something or a service that does a job and in an ideal world, be able to then use that service without having to put my hand in my pocket every five minutes. There are things I know I will need – like a car park – but those should be at a fair cost, given that I have already paid, in my fare, an element for the use of the airport. Technically, I suppose, the airline has paid the airport for the use of that airport and that charge, presumably, should pay for their passengers to use that airport – UB tax is for Passenger Service Charge – and by all accounts, if the ramblings of airlines using Luton are correct, Luton manages to cook up some nice charges for their ‘planes to use the airport. £2 is a lot for a trolley. Why should I have to pay – why would I need to pay – £3 to bypass a queue? Should not the airport provide enough staff that daft length queues do not arise? Further, though Easyjet staff are, in my opinion, well trained and respectful – how does Luton manage to find, for their staff, the most irritable and bad tempered people around?

This is what I mean about proportionality, or to put it another way, that airports, specifically Luton, need to get their snouts out of the trough.