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Ruinair Flight FR206 – Tuesday @ 8.30am – DUB-STN-DUB

Fare €2 plus taxes, fees and charges €42

Ruinair have a proud history of stopping passengers. In 2003 they refused boarding to ‘IT girl’ and Bollinger babe Tara Palmer Tomkinson because she did not have a required passport, despite travelling on an internal flight within the UK. She forgot IT. Apparently she retorted, ‘Do you know who I am?’ She was lucky not to suffer the fate of a us domestic passenger who once shrieked the same riposte, before a check-in agent used a public address system to speak to the entire Departures terminal: ‘May I have your attention please. We have a passenger here who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him find his identity, please step forward to this counter.’ Also in 2003 they refused boarding to Jeremy Beadle, much to the relief of the other passengers on the flight. They stopped Marian Finucane, one of Ireland’s best known media personalities, because she had no ID. They refused boarding to a John O’Donoghue on a flight from Cork to Dublin because he did not have any picture ID and he was the Irish government’s Minister for Tourism. They stopped ‘Iron Mike’ Tyson from boarding a Gatwick to Dublin flight because he arrived late. The brutal, aggressive yet floored Tyson was quoted as saying, ‘As long as I am not too late, then it’s okay.’

But I am not truly convinced. Ruinair flew the oldest football in the world from Glasgow Prestwick to Hamburg Lubeck to take pride of place at a World Cup exhibition in Hamburg. Checking in under the name of Mr A. Football, the sixteenth-century pig’s bladder, reputed to have been kicked about by Mary Queen of Scots at her weekly five-a-side game in Linlithgow, travelled in a specially designed box, had its own seat and I am told selected a pizza and Bovril from the in-flight menu. I am sure that ball had no passport. I always heed Mick’s advice. ‘On the photo identification, we are sorry for the old people who do not have a passport, although it only applies between Ireland and the United Kingdom, but our handling people are in an impossible position. We cannot include old age pension books as a form of identification when we are dealing with sixteen different countries coming through Stansted. The handling people on the ground simply cannot handle it. It has to be very simple, which is the reason we require a passport, driving licence or the international student card. We do not want the university student card or the Blockbuster video card.’

Never engage Ruinair check-in staff in voluntary conversation for fear they find an obscure reason to deny boarding. ‘Sorry sir, that couldn’t possibly be you in that awful passport photograph.’ Today is not the day to naively ask for a good window seat near the front and see their reaction. Be conscious of the small print they put on page 173 of their standard email confirmation. This states the following. ‘Look mate, no matter what happens at any stage in this flight, it’s your own fault not ours, so don’t ever try to mess with us.’ I worry they will get me soon at check-in. They get us all eventually. I will be late. I will have no ID. I will forget the email confirmation. The check-in queue will be too long. I will not have shaved. They won’t like my jumper. Some braver folk dice with death and bring a Post-it note with their confirmation reference. But I always bring along my emailed itinerary so I can show the check-in girl that I only paid one euro.

Ruinair weigh passenger checked luggage as carefully as the us Department of the Treasury weigh gold bars leaving the Fort Knox Bullion Depository in Kentucky. I watch other passengers on their knees on the floor, opening suitcases and dividing their life’s possessions into heavy items and not-so-heavy items, all being somewhat reminiscent of that U2 song ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’. Someone spots an unused check-in desk with a weighing scales so others check the weight of their baggage with fingers crossed, but the cashiers who double as check-in agents are not happy that the rabble are using the scales. A reading of 15 kg on the red display is joy; 16 kg is despair. ‘She wants to charge me for one feckin’ kilo over.’ The guy ahead with a huge suitcase is about to be badly screwed until the cashier asks him to weigh his backpack which is a tiny 2 kg. He moves about 5 kg of dirty laundry from suitcase to backpack and so avoids excess baggage charges but holds us up for ages and all his baggage is still going in the aircraft, whether it’s in the hold or the overhead bin, and all their petty baggage rules suddenly seem so pointless.

I heard a rumour that Ruinair may introduce charges for customers who travel with emotional baggage, in an attempt to avoid delays caused by family arguments at check-in and at boarding. They will have a strict rule of ‘maximum of one divorce case per passenger’ with no pooling of cases allowed. So if a mother turns up at the airport with her children from a first marriage, and she is still not talking to her second husband, the check-in girl will ask her a series of questions about the divorce and all the suppressed anger and guilt felt by the family, and Ruinair will charge her an extra ten euros. If the mother complains that this money-grabbing reminds her of the absent father who just took, took, took and left her nothing in his will, Ruinair will add another five euros.

What do you think Mick? ‘People are overly obsessed with charges. They complain we are charging for check-in, but people who use web check-in and only have carry-on luggage are getting even cheaper fares. We are absolutely upfront about charges and the baggage charges and the check-in charges will rise. We will keep raising them until we can persuade the 40% to 50% of passengers who travel with us for one or two days to bring just one carry-on bag. I can go away for two weeks with just my overnight bag. Instead of packing a hairdryer, why not buy one when you get there?’

I have long since tired of playing their checked baggage game. It’s easier to pay the checked baggage fee of when booking a trip of any longer than a few days. So on the day of travel I can put the baggage in the hold or else carry it on and I have found that once you pay the fee they never bother to look at your carry-on baggage and I can take as much as I can carry with me on board so they don’t lose my baggage. This arrangement suits both parties since they have their blood money and I can do what I want with my luggage. A few euros to transport a suitcase to Europe is a steal in every sense. I mean, FedEx or DHL would charge me a hundred euros or more and they would not be as quick.

Check-in is fairly ugly with many long queues snaking around the Departures area but no clue as to which desks they lead to. Lost Ruinair staff with less than perfect English stand and look at us. There’s a queue beside me for a flight to Bournemouth and I’m not sure why. Maybe Bournemouth is close to somewhere more exciting. Near the check-in queue are a gang of teenage Nike Hoodie boys, apparently wearing legitimate tracksuits emblazoned with the names of various Dublin boxing clubs. A gent asks where they are going. One of the freckled shaven-head terriers clenches up a fist. ‘We’re off to kill the feckin’ English.’

This airline, like any multi-million Boeing, is a well-oiled machine. Their operating system is simple. Each aircraft departs from its base on the first wave of flights early in the day (much like when the Japanese set off en masse early one morning for Pearl Harbour), and by the end of the operating day at midnight all crew and aircraft are back home. There is no scheduled over-nighting away from base, so there are no nasty hotel bills to pay. Each aircraft usually makes eight flights per day, from 6am to midnight. I saw a programme on RTE where their pilots said the ‘earlies’ are getting earlier, they don’t get a break for nine hours and cannot even get off the plane to buy a sandwich because they must supervise the refuelling. Landing and taking off many times per day is a more stressful job than flying intercontinental long haul. But on the upside Ruinair pilots do not have to fly to congested hubs like Heathrow and Schiphol.

One cabin crew team works the first four flights, or sectors, then another cabin crew takes the last four flights. Sometimes the pilots can fly a six-sector day which involves three return flights from Ireland to the UK. This airline rosters pilots on a pattern of five early-start days and two days off, followed by five late-start days and two days off, known as 5/2/5/2, which some crews like because of the predictability. But many of their pilots fly so much that they reach the 900-hour annual maximum limit specified by Europe’s aviation regulations before the year is over, and as the airline runs the same rostering year for everyone from 1 April to 31 March, this can lead to a crew crisis and lack of pilots at the end of every March when the pilots can sit around for weeks with their feet up since it would be illegal for them to take to the air.

Some of the pilots feel overworked so they set up a covert website for the Ruinair European Pilots Association called www.repaweb.org in order to communicate privately with each other. Ruinair do not approve but the Irish High Court dismissed an application by Ruinair seeking disclosure of the identities of pilots using the website. Ruinair contended that some of their pilots had been intimidated by postings by anonymous individuals using code names including ‘I hate Ruinair’ and ‘Can’t fly, Won’t fly’. However, the Justice refused to allow their identities to be revealed. He said that there was no evidence of bullying by the defendants to the action and the only evidence of bullying in the case was by the plaintiff, Ruinair. Mick doesn’t agree that his pilots are under pressure. ‘I don’t even know how I would put a pilot under pressure. What do you do? Call him up as he’s coming in to land? They are paid €100,000 a year for flying eighteen hours a week. How could you be fatigued working nine days in every two weeks? They can afford to buy yachts. If this is such a Siberian salt mine and I am such an ogre then why are they still working for the airline?’

All aircraft are left at their home base overnight so fault fixing is easier. There is no slack in the operating system. Turnarounds are scheduled to take only 25 minutes, and any delays are subject to immediate scrutiny. Timing is so tight that the only chance the pilots get to have a break is when they are safely up in the air. If the cabin is absolutely full, 25 minutes is simply impossible, so pilots rely on arriving early at the gate to achieve an on-time departure. If any aircraft become unserviceable, Ruinair has four standby aircraft at the ready: at the time of writing one is based at Dublin, one at Rome Ciampino and two at Stansted. Daily at 8am after the first wave of departures, all the base operations chiefs in Europe join a conference phone call. Each centre sends an email to the Dublin headquarters detailing performance. If there is a reason even for a one-minute delay it is discussed to see if a recurrence can be prevented. At 8.30am every Monday at the Dublin headquarters, all the department heads meet Mick and they review the week’s operational performance. That must be fun. ‘Late? What do you mean f****** late?’

So it’s not surprising that our aircraft is on time. I watch the disembarking passengers trudge past us. There’s also an incoming flight from Liverpool so every second passenger who alights wears full Liverpool FC replica kit. Mick likes Liverpool. ‘Liverpool is the low fares regional airport for the north-west of England. Liverpool doesn’t have all the glass, bells and whistles that Manchester has, but passengers don’t want glass, bells and whistles. It’s always good to see Liverpool give Manchester a good kicking.’ All of the passengers are bleary-eyed and fatigued. I woke up at 6am to catch my flight. I dread to think at what time these fellow travellers awoke. It was hardly worth even going to bed. Often low fares comes at a high price. Having aircraft lying around doing nothing at night-time must ruin this airline. Soon there’ll be 3am flights.

On the plane I read Ruinair, the first edition of their in-flight magazine, which I keep because it will surely be worth a lot of money in years to come. There is an advertisement from the printers of the magazine based in Warsaw. I bet they’re low-cost printers. The magazine includes a model Boeing to buy; a push-fit plastic model requiring no glue or paint, with realistic take-off sounds and flashing lights, like what we fly in today. I read Mick’s message on the first page. I can’t believe he writes this piece himself because of the absence of swear words. He describes the amazing in-flight Movie-Star system. There’s a sample on-screen picture, showing Mick getting on board an aircraft, hands on hips, open-neck shirt and jeans. I think that’s the same shirt. I hope we don’t have to pay €7 to listen to him. Six months of trials later they can the movie system because no one wants to pay to use it. There is an editorial with a quote from Saint Augustine who is the patron saint of low fares air travel. ‘The world is a book and those who do not travel, read only a page’ I keep my copy of the magazine for research purposes but the crew come through the cabin to retrieve all copies. So I sit on my magazine. They pass by. I triumph but there will be a downside. They print 70,000 copies of every issue, and 50 per cent of passengers spend thirty minutes reading it. Tonight the employee who counts the magazines in the warehouse in Dublin airport will shout over to his foreman: ‘Hey, Seamus, it’s happened again. We’re down to 69,999 copies. Some fecker has nicked a copy.’

The magazine has a tacky insert called Buy As You Fly, which features mail order products that no one would ever need or use or want as a gift. There’s a wooden rocking chair. I mean who ever uses a rocking chair except Val Doonican or the elderly gentleman in the TV advertisements for Werthers Original sweets? There’s a Hercules Winch which will uproot an unwanted tree, pull a vehicle out of a ditch or winch in a boat but I don’t have any unwanted trees, I don’t often drive my car into ditches (of which there are few where I live and in any event I would be calling the AA) and, like most of the population, I don’t own a boat. There’s a Snail and Slug Trap which is filled with beer to entice the slimy rascals inside where they drown but go with a big smile on their faces. What a waste of good beer. There’s the Garden Kneeler Bench, a real life-saver for the avid but badly crippled gardener. There’s the dog bark control collar, the sonic mole repeller and the ultrasonic cat repeller; all repelling. There’s the appropriately named Sudoku for Dummies. There are Exclusive Football Stadium Framed Prints. How exclusive can they be if I can buy one by mail order? There’s an anti-frost mat to prevent icy build-up in my freezer. What a load of rubbish.

In 1942 the us Air Force established an airfield at Stansted for its Marauder bomber squadron. In the early days of this low fares Mecca everyone flew from here for free courtesy of the us government, but mostly it was on daytime bombing runs to Berlin. Later the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command abandoned the airfield, leaving a civil airport with one of the longest runways in Europe, but with zero passengers. The airport was designated as London’s third and re-opened in 1991 as the greatest white elephant of its time. There was no train link from London to the airport. Air UK flew there and Cubana Airlines operated a weekly flight to Havana via Gander on a Russian-made Ilyushin jet. The BAA, with noted starchitect Norman Foster on board, spent £300 million on a terminal building with a floating roof supported by a frame of inverted-pyramid roof trusses, a glass and steel masterpiece in the middle of nowhere. Ideal for Ruinair.

Why do we need architects to design airports? Let’s build a building and have glass walls so it’s bright inside. Let’s put a flat roof on it. Let’s have a train station underneath and how about some bus stops outside? And then let’s build a Toytown train to take people to the piers—we’ll have two of those. Let’s call them A & B. And hey, how about we make one half for Departures and the other for Arrivals? But Stansted is revolutionary for one genuine reason. Before Stansted, airports used to have roofs full of cabling, air conditioning and insulation. Foster put them all under the floor and opened the roof to the sky, safe in the knowledge that sunlight is considerably cheaper than paying a monthly London Electricity bill. This is the airport of choice for the authorities when a hijacked aircraft wants to land in the South-East. I rest my case. When a Sudanese airliner was hijacked and landed here, Ruinair responded with an advertisement headlined: ‘It’s amazing what lengths people will go to to fly cheaper than Ruinair.’ As Mick says, ‘Usually someone gets offended by our ads, which is fantastic. You get a whole lot more bang for your buck if somebody is upset.’

The BAA plan to build a new runway at Stansted. The analysis of the £4 billion spend includes £90 million for a runway, £1 billion plus for a terminal building and an amazing £350 million for earthmoving and landscaping, the latter representing a gardening event of truly Alan Titchmarsh proportions. Mick as usual offers his modest opinion. ‘The BAA are on a cocaine-induced spending spree. They are an overcharging, gold-plating monopoly which should be broken up. BAA have no particular skills in building airports and are the worst airport builders in the western world. A break-up of BAA would be the greatest thing that has happened to British aviation since the founding of Ruinair. Then airline customers would not be forced to endure the black hole of Calcutta that is Heathrow, or the unnecessary, overpriced palace being planned at Stansted. The BAA want to spend £4 billion on an airport which should cost £100 million. £3.9 billion is for tree planting, new roadways and Norman Foster’s Noddy railway so they can mortgage away the future of low-cost airlines. This plan is for the birds. People can drive up the M11, they will walk barefoot over the fields for a cheap fare. What they are not going to do is pay for some bloody marble Taj Mahal.’

Mick is even considering ways to avoid incurring the charges at the check-in desks at BAA’S Stansted airport: ‘I could check in people in the car park, which would be cheaper than BAA. If they don’t let me use their car parks we might let them check in at the truckers’ car park on the M11.’ Equally the BAA CEO enjoys a public spat with his biggest customer at Stansted and rebuts Mick. ‘You could probably build the runway for £100 million if you had a flat piece of ground, were not worried about where you parked the aircraft and were not worried about how to get the passengers on and off the planes. The runway would only cost £100m if all we had to do was fly some Irish labourers over to lay some tarmac down the drive.’

It’s a rough landing at Stansted in gale force winds but it’s not a bad landing. A good landing is one where the pilot plants the wheels onto the asphalt and comes to a stop. A bad landing is any other sort of landing. I don’t know how much these aircraft can take, but if it had been my motor car, it would now be scrap. I turn to a guy in the aisle seat. ‘Not a great landing?’ I suggest. All he can do is mumble and then show me the open palm of his hand, slam it down hard on his thigh and utter the single word ‘Splat.’ I am reminded of the note written by a girl to the captain on a Qantas flight. ‘Dear captain. My name is Nicola. I am 8 years old. This is my first flight but I’m not scared. I like to watch the clouds go by. My mum says the crew is nice. I think your plane is good. Thanks for a nice flight. Don’t fuck up the landing. Luv Nicola.’

Shortly after we land, a loud trumpet fanfare is broadcast through the cabin, followed by ‘Congratulations, you’ve arrived at your destination ahead of schedule.’ I look at the crew members in disbelief and they are evidently mortified at having to play such a tacky announcement but it’s company policy. It’s also odd because they are congratulating us for an early arrival but we didn’t make the aircraft go faster. As soon as we stop we all feel the need to instantly power up our mobile telephones. The cabin interior is suddenly a cacophony of harmonised Nokia tunes. One rough-looking older gentleman close to me immediately has to take an incoming telephone call. He swears loudly. ‘Jaysus, who the hell is this? This call will cost me a fucking fortune, what with their roaming charges when I’m away from me home.’

There is an air-bridge when we arrive at the pier but we don’t use it, in line with this airline’s stated policy. ‘When we used Jet-Way airbridges, we found that they were the fourth largest cause of delays. Either the Jet-Way wasn’t there when we arrived, or the buffoon who was driving it was out by a few inches, and had to take the whole thing back and forth again before landing up at our doors. If it’s raining, people will just walk a little faster.’ It is sometimes necessary to take the Skytrain from the arrival gate to the Arrivals hall. This can be confusing for some travellers. I once arrived here on a flight, got on the Skytrain and sat beside an elderly Irish lady. She turned to me in the tiny train without a driver and asked, ‘Is this the Piccadilly line?’ Needless to say, I told her it was and if she stayed on board for the next fifty minutes, she would be in the West End.

Today I join the long march from the gate to the Arrivals hall, largely reminiscent of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in the winter of 1812, although fewer of us die from hypothermia, but some are picked off by snipers or succumb to the changing seasons, dysentery or the dreaded tetsi fly. My taxes and charges today include the arbitrary Wheelchair Levy, so next time I’m asking for one to take me to Arrivals.

If Ruinair didn’t exist, would Stansted airport shut down simply for lack of use? One in six flights out of Stansted is taken by some of the one million British people visiting second homes abroad, which they do on average six times a year. Ruinair flights here are like hailing a taxi. If you wait long enough, one will soon come along. Their aircraft are everywhere, like some bubonic plague. In the future, Boeing will manufacture all 737 aircraft with the Ruinair logo as the default livery. Boeing does not disclose production rates, but it is believed to build about twenty-eight 737s a month, or one every day. I read in the newspaper that a delay in the delivery of four new Boeing aircraft to Ruinair meant the airline was forced to cancel 1,200 flights, affecting an estimated 300,000 passengers. It is not untrue to conclude that the growth of this airline is only being impeded by Boeing’s failure to build new aircraft fast enough.

The UK aerospace industry’s trade surplus with the rest of the world shrank by a third one year, because of the huge volume of Boeing aircraft being brought into the UK by this single airline. Ruinair now have so many Boeing aircraft that they could easily lose one and then accidentally locate it again at some lesser-known airport.

Ruinair gave its flying angel logo bigger breasts. Mick ordered the change on all new Boeing 737-800 aircraft. The image boost was first spotted by Ruinair workers at Stansted airport. A spokesman said: ‘We decided to give our customers a more uplifting experience. We think she is rather aerodynamic.’ Ruinair’s spokeswoman for the Nordic region said: ‘We do not wish to milk the situation.’

Mick adores Boeing and he sometimes visits Seattle to collect new aircraft in person. ‘Boeing made a lot of bullshit promises in 1999 but uniquely in the history of aviation they have beaten them. This is the best bloody aircraft in the world for short-haul operations. You people build the best god-damn aircraft in the world. My three favourite words are ‘Made in Seattle’. I promise I won’t say anything like ‘Screw Airbus’. Bravo Boeing! Adios Airbus! Fuck the French. We are an oasis of Boeings in a sea of Airbuses in Europe. And I can’t fly the bloody things. I can’t even turn them on.’ Once he bought 9 billion US dollars worth of aircraft from Boeing at a significant discount, believed to be at $28 million each rather than the list price of $60 million: ‘We raped them. I wouldn’t even tell my priest what discount I got.’ Mick doesn’t like the wider Airbus A320. ‘I’ve heard a lot of horseshit about a wider fuselage. I’ve yet in fifteen years in this industry to meet one passenger who booked his ticket based on a wider fuselage.’

The terminal walls are plastered with advertisements for this airline. ‘This is the home of low fares.’ Here we live and breathe their Eurobrand. There is a route map but Western Europe has disappeared under a swathe of yellow arrows emanating from Stansted. This airline adds new routes at a rate only exceeded by the inflation rate in Zimbabwe. Along the way there’s a Ruinair aircraft outside with the words Arrividerci Alitalia. Stuff it to the Eyeties, but don’t get too xenophobic. Other aircraft announce Auf Wiedersehen Lufthansa. It must be great for a Lufthansa pilot to park at an airport stand and look at that jingoism out your cockpit window for 25 minutes (usual turnaround time). Other aircraft in the fleet have the slogans Say No to Lufthansa’s Fuel Tax, Say No to BA Fuel Levy, Bye Bye SkyEurope, Bye Bye EasyJet and Bye Bye Baby, the latter a reference to competitor BMI Baby rather than to a 1970s pop song. They might as well put on the side of every aircraft, To All Other European Airlines—Go Fuck Yourselves.

I walk the concourse. The newspaper headlines in W. H. Smith catch my eye. The Evening Standard has ‘Children Must Not Use Mobile Phones’. Unlikely. The Daily Sport has ‘TV Star’s Sex with Poodle Next Door’. Equally unlikely, I fear. The Sun has ‘One Hundred Thousand Holidays for a Fiver’. Is this news? Another Daily is asking its readers ‘What does it mean to be British?’ The best reply to date is from a man in Switzerland: ‘Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Chinese on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American soap shows on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.’

The Stansted Express to Liverpool Street is punctual, not cheap. It’s worth taking the train because the BAA tell us that last year there were 178 days of roadworks on the motorway to London and there are 571 sets of traffic lights between here and Central London. I gaze around. Airports, there’s nothing like them. The variety of people and cultures, excitement and expectation, arrival and escape, the last-minute crises, the personal dramas, the tearful partings and joyful reunions. I could live in an airport. Jesus, maybe I do.

I have always loved airlines and travel; eschewing a structured social order and a daily routine of life for a flight of fancy to a new world less familiar; cheating the four seasons. Mick is not such a fan. ‘The problem with the airline industry is it is so populated with people who grew up in the 1940s or 1950s who got their excitement looking at airplanes flying overhead. They wanted to be close to airplanes. Mercifully I was a child of the 1960s and a trained accountant, so aircraft don’t do anything for me. There’s a lot of big egos in this industry. That might be a better title for them, including myself rather than entrepreneurs. It’s a stupid business, which generally loses a lot of money. With the exception of Southwest and ourselves, and EzJet to a lesser extent, nobody makes a lot of money at it.’

But why go to Central London when I have shops, restaurants, cafés, a viewing gallery, ample seating and more tourists than I could ever encounter on Oxford Street or at Madame Tussauds? I decide to spend the remaining five hours of my allotted time in the UK here, and I engage in my continuing observation of my fellow users of this airport.

1. Italian Students. They reside permanently in Departures, sorted into large groups, surrounded by backpacks piled high on luggage trolleys. They are dressed by FCUK, Diesel and Quicksilver. They survive on communal bottles of mineral water and occasional trips to Prêt a Manger. They rarely venture into Central London. They keep in touch with the world via Dell laptops and Wifi G-mail. They grow goatee beards or shave only weekly. They fly home for significant events such as births, marriages or funerals but promptly return to their place of permanent residence, irresistibly drawn by fares of one euro and the absence of rent at Stansted. I don’t engage in voluntary conversation because the guys wear T-shirts which advise ‘Practice Safe Sex, Go Fuck Yourself’ or else ‘If You Don’t Like Oral Sex, Then Shut Your Mouth.’ Their spiky bohemian girlfriends wear T-shirts which advise ‘Your Son is in Good Hands’. These passengers are the key to success in the low fares airline business since they will happily take 6am flights to nowhere and catch two-hour-long bus excursions, whilst businessmen love Heathrow and BA. The difference is time. Businessmen are time poor. No one has more time to spare than an Italian student.

2. Old Dears. They sometimes gather around in a huddle, take out a sliced white loaf, add some Utterly Butterly spread, select ham and cheese from assorted baskets and self-assemble their own sandwiches in a manufacturing operation of such operational efficiency as to impress even Henry Ford.

3. Old Blokes. They cluster together in teams and are identifiable in sporting matching blazers and grey slacks, possibly either rightly proud veterans or members of a lawn bowling club. Often they break out into Welsh accents and talk about getting up at 4am to catch a mini-bus up the motorway to Stansted.

4. Foursomes. Two pairs of Old Dears and Old Blokes off on holidays. One Old Bloke is hyper-active and so refuses to sit, preferring to go for newspapers for all tastes and to search airport desks for luggage tags. His Old Dear recalls she left a cucumber in the fridge at home so she telephones her daughter to use it. The second Old Bloke is not budging and wonders aloud why anyone needs luggage tags since they advertise to all that your home is empty for two weeks. His Old Dear decides to re-lace her gleaming new sneakers. Eventually she gives up. ‘Good job I don’t work in a shoe shop. I’d be there for hours doing up laces.’

5. Check-in Ladies. These females of a certain age wear blue uniforms which are two sizes too small. The ladies are wide, rather than tall, and teeter about on precarious six-inch heels. They wander amidst the ever-lengthening queues of the Great Unwashed disappearing over the horizon, occasionally looking at impressive clipboards and lists of flight timings, scribbling notes with Bic biros. Their job is to never make eye contact or engage any passengers, and particularly not to intervene when any check-in delays arise. But beware. Cross these ladies once and you will never fly anywhere anytime ever again.

6. Check-in Gents. These thirty-ish males stand in the raised areas overlooking each check-in area. They are only visible from the waist upwards, unfortunately often much like Fiona Bruce on the BBC. They wear excessive assorted BAA security ID dog tags hung around their necks like Vietnam GIs and sport tight officialdom haircuts. The Check-in Gent’s job is to closely examine all the female talent below and to nod approvingly in small groups when a fit Italian brunette or a Nordic blonde with big tits leans over the desk below.

7. Trolley Dollies. Not flight attendants but guys in luminous jackets who gather the baggage trolleys from the concourse. Their job is to steal back the trolleys from sleeping Italian students, make the world’s longest snake of inter-connected trolleys, apply for an entry in the Guinness World Records and drive their trolley snake through the heart of the dormant student population, forcing them to rise from their slumber and scatter like the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. ‘Sorry mate, I didn’t see you down there.’

8. Dixon’s Homing Businessman. Guys in suits with an overnight bag, laptop PC, briefcase and duty free bag. They stand carrying all four items whilst on a mobile telephone, broadcast to the Departures lounge about sales forecasts and cash budgets, refuse to sit and lessen the load, instead irresistibly drawn to the threshold of Dixon’s electrical store, worried that the latest digital nano-gadget might pass them by.

9. The Well-Heeled Couple. He is tall with proud features and silver hair and wears chinos with a crease, open-neck Ralph Lauren Polo shirt and blue blazer with gold buttons. She wears make-up, a tan, jewels, and heels. Both are fifty-something. Their luggage matches, mostly it’s Louis Vuitton, and they lug golf bags or skis over to the oversize baggage. They ask for directions around Stansted since they are only used to the confines of Heathrow Terminal 1 or 5. ‘We usually fly BA Club Europe but this cheap little Irish airline flies to somewhere near our summer holiday home / winter ski chalet / golf course / friend’s yacht.’

10. Lost Elderly Irishman. He is alone and is bewildered by Stansted, having left his Cricklewood or Kilburn digs on a rarely taken journey back to his roots, usually to Knock Ireland West, maybe sadly to a funeral. Or I suspect some well-meaning relative bought him a ticket home for two pence so he feels obliged to use it. I doubt he is sitting at home Googling away all day looking for free seat sales. Personally I blame low fares airlines for upsetting his ordered life. He wears his Sunday best, an old navy suit, perhaps his only suit, and his passport shakes in his rough hands. I always offer him as much assistance as possible.

I am early for check-in. It’s two hours to departure. I sit opposite a screen showing my flight. The desk opens soon after and I amble over. I am overtaken by a woman with a walking stick who runs to the same check-in desk. She is using the established Old Woman with Fake Walking Stick ploy to get ahead in the queue.

In the security area we watch a statuesque six-foot-plus lady passenger. She sets off the X-ray machine so she stops by the BAA staff, holds her arms out and waits to be frisked. It’s a male staff member, about five foot five and his eyes are at the level of her breasts.

He smiles. ‘Darling, I’d love to search you but I’d lose my job.’ A female staff member rescues him.

The Metro Café in Departures is crammed with Ruinair staff; less passenger fare and more works canteen. It’s terrifying to sit near the departure gates at Stansted, with the constant stream of threats they unleash at us poor passengers over the tannoy. ‘Pre-boarding call. Come immediately to Gate 42. Last few remaining passengers. The gate is now closing. Your luggage will be offloaded. You will be denied boarding. Last and final boarding call.’ And there’s the public shaming of passengers by name.

If you wish to break a terrorist suspect, don’t play white noise. Make them spend a day at Stansted.