Opportunity knocks for ships.

(From Lloyds List)

NOW here is a challenge for those who move passengers around by sea! An authoritative poll, strategically undertaken in the wake of the Bank Holiday in the UK, and British Airways' lamentable performance last week, suggests that people's romance with the air is fast disappearing. It is a global phenomenon, too, caused by the simple fact that flying has become, even for frequent flyers travelling business class, a more stressful experience than actually working.

It is not at all difficult to determine the reasons for this disillusion that has made mobile populations wonder whether their journey is really necessary, and given a huge fillip to the video-conferencing software producer. Air travel is indeed a dreadful experience that is getting progressively worse. The industry has tried hard to recover from the aftermath of September 11, but the demands of security are such that with this factor alone, check-in times, stress levels and the sheer frightfulness of the immigration experience in certain countries taxes the determination of the traveller to the utmost.

Even the speed, which was the main selling point of air travel, is rendered pointless by the processes at either end of the air journey segment. All the fuel and horsepower consumed by the sophisticated machinery of the aluminium tube seems somehow futile, as the passengers queue, queue and queue again, sit for hours in a non-travelling mode, processed like manufactured products in the transport assembly line.

Those of us who are more ardent environmentalists are looking with increasing guilt at the vapour trails in the sky and wondering whether we just ought to stay at home.

It is tempting to suggest that air travel has become the great liberator of populations confined to their countries, benevolent facilitator of international business and general understanding.

And so it is, up to a point, although it could be argued that a high proportion of international business journeys are unnecessary, while exporting cheaply the habits of ...