Travelling Inspirations: air travel blogs

If waiting for your luggage to come off the carousel excites you - you can't wait to get outside the terminal and see what's out there, right? - or one of your favorite film scenes is the one in Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express where the couple fool around with the model airplane in bed, then you're probably an air travel junkie like me. There are some inspirational blogs out there about air travel, airports, airlines, and the aviation industry: Airline Confidential by Richard Havers and Christopher Tiffney, authors of the book of the same name, is an engaging read about the fun of flying, the glamour of air travel, "the crazy wacky world of airlines", and people behaving badly and bizarrely; Another Passport Stamp is a blog about a London-based, American flight attendant's travels, layovers and quests for yet another passport stamp, sprinkled with some delicious eavesdropping and gossip; while Yu Hu Stewardess is the cheeky blog of a 'fly girl' who claims her stories are true but the details have been changed because "nobody wants to get fired or sued" - she hasn't written in a while so let's hope she wasn't fired, but there's some scintillating stuff in her archives! The Wings Stayed On is a commercial pilot's behind-the-scenes blog with some revealing 'day in the life' descriptions while Flight Blogger, sub-titled "if you fly fast enough, the sun never sets", covers the nuts and bolts of the aviation industry - literally - as he takes a look at where production is at on new aircraft (this one's only for the obsessives perhaps). The Airline Blog covers news and rumors in the industry; Thirty Thousand Feet is a blog about all things aviation with a portal with links to more blogs and sites about airlines, airports, and airplanes; while Aircrew Buzz is an aviation news blog with commentary on current events and issues. On a more practical note, In Flight HQ has a tech bent, offering up "tools, tips and techniques for being productive at 30,000 feet"; while One Bag blogs about "the art and science of travelling light", something as a travel writer I find impossible to master with a bag full of technology, books, press kits, and research materials to cart around.

A Celebration of Air Travel and the Democratization of Travel

I actually enjoy air travel, especially long haul. I'm not a fan of take off and landing, but when I'm up there I still love looking out the window at the incredible cloud formations. Especially at sunset or sunrise. I like to savor that first glass of wine and salty crackers, to discuss the menu with my husband and decide what to eat, and when I'm flying Emirates, I enjoy flicking through their impressive entertainment program and deciding on the films, tv programs and radio shows we're going to kick back to. Which is why I relate to travel writer Pico Iyer who celebrates air travel in 'The Golden Age of Travel' over on Jetlagged: Navigating the Unfriendly Skies, the New York Times' new travel blog. Iyer argues that air travel has never been as comfortable, easy or as affordable as it is now. My husband and I get on and off planes like most commuters do buses and trains - you don't want to know how many flights we took last year - so, aside from the increasingly bad airline food we've experienced of late, I have to agree with Iyer. Criticizing those who complain about airport security and lost luggage, Iyer wonders whether it isn't "the democracy of travel that many of us are objecting to these days when we speak of more crowded planes and long lines at the airport". And I think he has a point. I like the fact that in the UAE, for instance, most of the passengers using the excellent low-cost airline Air Arabia are labourers, construction workers and truck drivers travelling between Dubai and their homes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, and so on. Their check-in luggage includes, alongside gifts for their families (boxes of dates, toys for the kids), rolled-up foam mattresses, blankets, and enormous containers of clean water - the necessities most of us take for granted. The cheap flights mean that rather than flying home once every year or two, these guys can now fly home more frequently. And take back with them goods their families might otherwise miss out on. We rarely see any white well-off travellers on these Air Arabia's flights, and that's a shame. Or is it?