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Campaign page: Celebrate the Freedom of Flight

Celebrate the freedom of flight

We are asking you to send in your accounts of the benefits of flight - a trip that changed your life, a visit to long-unseen friends or family overseas, your plans for a summer in the sun; or your thoughts on the freedom and ease that flight does, and could, bring. Email these to info@manifestoclub.com.




Special Flight Features:

Views on flight:


I wholeheartedly support readily available, cheap flights because of the opportunity flying gives to align lived experience to what we have read or been told by friends. In the last 12 months I have been fortunate enough to see the Eiffel tower, the Sistine chapel, the gondolas of Venice and the Great Wall of China. Not only did each trip open my eyes to a different way of life, and often life in a different era, but it also taught me about the importance of seeing these things for myself. Media reports could not have been more wrong about China- often reported as an ignorant, undynamic country- but I wouldn’t have known this without going there. As Socrates said ‘Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives'. Suzy Dean

Isn't it great that we live in a world where relationships with best friends and family are less constrained by living in different countries? I'm British, live in Italy & have siblings living in the USA, Spain and UK. But thanks to cheap, fast flights we were all together for Christmas & many of us are on holiday today in Rhode Island, USA. However, it is perhaps more remarkable that many of my two sons' best friends live in different countries. Even though my sons are only 4 and 7, they have formed relationships with children in other countries who they play with frequently because we can fly quickly and cheaply. Even though I travelled a lot as a child, the idea of having close friends in other countries was beyond the imagination. Flying has therefore made a significant contribution to our sense of generational progress. Dominic Standish

Four years ago I met my now husband, Courtney, in London. Neither of us were local - I had moved from Scotland and he had come slightly further from Trinidad - but we had both arrived in London looking for new challenges and trying to escape the inevitable parochialism of small towns. We decided to get married in spring of 2007 but had the inevitable headache of planning a wedding where each family lived on the opposite side of the Atlantic. We both have families who are very important to us and so we agreed to get married in Scotland but have a party a week later in Trinidad. Thanks to the Caribbean being a popular holiday resort, some of Courtney's family were able to take advantage of the affordable chartered flights out of Tobago and make it to Scotland for the wedding. In turn, my family, and quite a few of our friends, decided to make the return trip to Trinidad. It was a week when we discovered the differences between life in the UK and life in rural Trinidad. But mainly it was when we discovered the similarities between our families: while my family had arranged a ceilidh band, Courtney's had booked a steel pan band; my family floored his family with Drambuie, they had their revenge with Puncheon rum; my family had gathered up all their spare warm clothes so his family would survive Aberdeen in February, and Courtney's had made sure my family had fans in every room to keep them cool (his Mum had even fitted air-conditioning especially for me). It was a week that none of us will forget, and will hopefully pave the way to many more meetings of our families over the years. Fiona McEwen

Having a great cheap holiday in Sardinia thanks to Ryanair and off to a conference in Paris in September with Easyjet. This is my 4th cheap flight this year. Now I can take my 6 year old daughter to spend some time with her Italian grandparents and little friends. Been in February for my father's 70th birthday and in May for an old friend's wedding. Quality of life keeps getting better. I'll have a glass of local fizzy to the Heathrow protesters - hope God or Gaia sends a flood on them! Michele Ledda

To me air travel means I can see my family members, who are spread across three continents, several times a year. I have been able to develop personal and professional relations across the world, having worked in Europe, America and the Middle East. Air travel has meant I could escape the English winter through charter trips to Greece and Croatia, trek across Ethiopian mountains, go on a road trip along the West Coast of America, gamble in the casinos of Las Vegas, fish under the midnight sun of northern Sweden, take a boat trip on the Bosporus in Istanbul, visit Hindu temples in India, the art galleries of Paris and see the sun rise over Mount Sinai in Egypt. Far from being unnecessary luxuries these are the kinds of experiences that everyone should be able to live through. Travelling abroad, living in different places and meeting people whose everyday lives differ from our own help us put our own particular experiences in perspective. Though imagination can take us a long way, nothing beats the first-hand experience. Nathalie Rothschild

I just get so excited every time that I click on the Easyjet and Ryanair interactive destination maps and see all the flashing routes shooting out of London…! What an incredible list of places to visit to for the price of a good night out! Cheaper, more frequent and numerous flights mean that we can now just spontaneously decide (without tedious planning, budgeting, scheduling…) to go and visit family or friends for the weekend, catch the latest Van Gogh exhibition in Amsterdam, or surprise a lover on the other side of the Atlantic for their birthday! It means that we have more choice and that we can afford to travel and see the world even if we’re on a tight budget. Today it’s so much easier to see things and places we had never even imagined existed, to be surprised and shocked and to discover something new about the world by just hopping on a plane… Surely, we wouldn’t want to go back to a time when this was a preserve of the rich and the famous! What a sad bunch of people these anti-airport, anti-flight protestors at Heathrow must be to wish to deny us the right and freedom to spend time with the people we love and to discover exciting new places around the world! Maria Grasso

Growing up, I was amazed by the story of my grandparents travelling for days on end by boat. My family was spread across many countries and it was a rare treat to visit them. My parents would save hard for our flights - and it was seen as a luxury unavailable to ordinary people. In the late 1980s I went on a round-the-world trip and it opened my eyes to new nations, customs and people. Since then, the increasing availability of cheaper flights has meant we can make friends, lovers and casual acquaintances all over the planet. I now live for the most part in New York. Having just had my son's birthday in London, he has now travelled to Colorado to see his grandfather, while I have headed east to Estonia. I am travelling through Latvia and then will fly to Odessa and then a train to Bucharest. I’ll then fly to meet some friends near Barcelona and finish off my trip, with another connecting flight, in Mykonos, Greece. This probably makes me a sinner on a grand scale in some people's eyes. However, I thoroughly reject such a negative view. I do find it entirely tedious at the London airports now - from the enforced shoe removals and liquid bans at Heathrow to the outrageously long queues at Gatwick. All of these frustrations however, simply show how important it is to improve our infrastructure and invest and expand - and reject the fearful perspective of no-growth naysayers, green and bureaucrat-grey alike. Here's to faster flights, more friendships and better transport all around the world, for everyone. Bon Voyage! Alan Miller

From my first take-off in a tiny, open-cockpit microlight, to every short hop from rainy Heathrow to rainy Manchester , every flight still fills me with exhilaration at the human achievement that makes it possible. “Fuck you, gravity, we win again,” I say to myself as we rise into the air, defying the limitations of evolution, turning the laws of physics and chemistry to our own will. Distances that would have taken my grandparents days or months to cover fly beneath us in hours. Less than a hundred years ago, pioneers were still risking their lives to turn human flight from an audacious dream into a practical reality. In the last century it has escaped from the preserve of the military and the very rich, and opened up the world to millions. The only crime is that it’s still beyond the reach of so many. Timandra Harkness

To me, being transported over great distances, at such high speeds, in the most inhospitable environment, at such a cheap price, in so much safety, is nothing short of a miracle. I always find it heartening to know that modern flying has developed into the safest form of mass travel known to mankind. Indeed, the Executive Director of the European Aviation Safety Agency, Patrick Goudou reassured his audience at a recent EU/US International Aviation Safety Conference in Prague that ‘aviation remains the safest mode of travel’. The latest safety report from the International Air Transport Association also confirms that when aviation safety is concerned, Western-built jets are amongst the safest in the world with only one accident per 1.5 million flights – that is certainly a tremendously low accident rate by any stretch of the imagination, especially for something as complex as flying. Even after having to endure all of Heathrow’s strict and tedious security procedures, nothing it seems can be more thrilling than the moment when your jet arrives at the runway, the engines are put into full thrust and you accelerate to a speed of 160 mph in three seconds flat, and off you go. Even though I might only have a rudimentary understanding of the science involved in flying, I still find myself astounded by the sight of the disappearing ground at Heathrow, and the rapid approach of the clouds – I think it’s about as close to miraculous as it will ever get. Courtney Hamilton

The idea of freedom and flight and women's emancipation is embodied for me in the figure of Amelia Earhart, who made the first female solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1932. Her achievement was brought close to me because she landed in my Irish grandmother's relation's field (Gallagher farm near Derry). Amelia Earhart's first request was to phone her husband in America - using a telephone was still a novelty for people in the area, few had a phone, let alone seeing her aeroplane land. Amelia Earhart even apologised for wearing trousers – again, women wearing trousers was still a novelty. Vanessa Pupacac

Growing up as the children of Irish immigrants in north London, my brothers and I loved spending our summers in the west of Ireland, but we loathed the journey that got us there. Our dad had a crappy silver Ford Cortina, in to which we would shove ourselves, our luggage, and crates of beer and boxes of cigarettes for Irish relatives who were expecting gifts. Five bickering boys in the back of a banger with suitcases and booze balanced on their laps – it was not a pretty sight. In this state we would drive 250 miles to Holyhead. There we would board the ghastly ferry to Ireland, a floating vessel of vomit, screeching children, drunks and priests. We’d either spend the four-hour crossing on the ship’s deck, freezing half-to-death, or in one of its smoke-filled lounges where you could pay entrepreneurial children 50p to empty your stinking sickbags. In Ireland, it was another five-hour drive from Dublin to the West. If any of us felt sick, we vomited out of the car window – or, if we were too exhausted to crane our necks in that direction, we’d hurl into a tatty carrier bag that inevitably had holes in it. Between 15 and 18 hours after leaving London we would finally arrive in Galway, looking like a family of tinkers that had been dragged backwards through a hedge and dipped in a sewer. Not any more. Now, there are no-frills flight companies that fly directly from London to Galway. It’s incredibly easy and relaxing: you log on to the website, pay your £60 or £70, and then fly from London Luton to the small but perfectly formed new airport in Galway, in NINETY MINUTES! And you arrive fresh, happy and ready for fun, whereas in the past you needed two or three days just to get over the trek by road, sea and insanity. Wilbur Wright, one of the great developers of manmade flight, said: “The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors, who in their gruelling travels in prehistoric times looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space.” So true. And today’s desire to fly cheaply is an idea handed down to us by those who had to suffer the humiliation of uncomfortable 18-hour car journeys while looking enviously at richer folk who were soaring freely in planes. Brendan O’Neill, 33, journalist and editor in London

I often think how incredibly lucky I am to have been born in the time and place I was. Our lives are incomparable to the lives of people from any previous era in terms of the choices we have and the way that we live. Widely available travel abroad is one of those fantastic things that have come from development and modernity providing opportunities to broaden the mind, learn languages and experience other cultures and even experience sunny summers. It is a privilege which the advent of cheap filghts has made accessible to many more people, and that can only be a good thing. I have made the most of it in the last few years, enjoying the opportunity to work on research projects in developing countries, to walk in the mountains of Morrocco and dance the tango in Buenos Aires. So yes we should celebrate the freedom of flight - may it be open to all! Dr Caspar Hewett, Chair, The Great Debate (http://thegreatdebate.org.uk)

30 years ago this year I and a friend flew off on a 2 week holiday to Majorca. We had a great time and we met two girls and within two years both couples were married. My friend and I met our best friends and all are still happy together. Bless the plane, it changed all our lives for the better! Ken Scott

As someone who works for a global education charity I spend a lot of my time at airport arrivals waiting for groups of our friends from countries such as Ghana, Brazil and Uganda. Our visitors have to suffer the pains of immigration officialdom while I wait with baited breath in the hope they’ll get through but I still love it and not just the excitement of meeting our guests. I always get there an hour early to sit and watch people from all over the world coming out of the trap door to smiling faces, hugs, long ‘missed you’ kisses and kids jumping up and down looking for their gifts. This is where life happens, where people get to meet each other for the first time or pick up loved one to share time with. I see people arriving back from exotic holidays, usually tanned and relaxed, full of their adventures from afar. Air travel is one of the most fantastic developments of our time. It quite literally expands our horizons and at least for people living in the West, it is becoming cheap enough for more of us to see so much more. Meeting new people and discovering more of this planet of ours should be celebrated not condemned. The only limitation for humanity is the fact that for so many millions of people flying half way around the world is still a distant dream. As my mate Millie in Ghana tells me “Your technology and transport means you can know and meet people the other end of your country and the other side of the world, we don’t even have enough paved roads and can’t always get to the next village.” In truth air travel and the possibilities it provides needs to massively expand across the globe and with it the freedom for everyone to see, do and be more. Viv Regan

When I was ten or eleven and the world seemed full of possibility, my friends and I often asked each other what we would do if we could have just one wish – my response was always “I wish I could fly”. Now, I know that many years later we are still not that technologically advanced to enable me to pull out of a pair of wings from my vast wardrobe and jump from the clifftops and land somewhere from my dreams, but, with the increase in airports, daily flights and cheaper travel, if I use my imagination when strapped into a Ryanair reclining seat I can just about pretend that it is I, and not the plane that is flying through the air and taking me to warmer climates and new sights. My childish imagination has remained intact even if outwardly I am now fast approaching middle age. My grandparents never left the town they were born in. They were working class and poor, no car, no transport other than an old bike and no idea what the wider world was like. Their horizons never extended more than the 20 miles they could pedal on their bikes or the 50 or so miles they travelled by bus into the next town and back. Their holidays were taken at the place known affectionately as “our gate” – no further than the garden gate, and they could only imagine what places like Africa and Australia were like as the cost of travel was way beyond their budget. One generation later, still solidly working class and my own parents have been able to experience the delights of sunnier countries and faraway places due to cheaper flights and a little more time and money. For me, my friends and family, cheaper travel has opened up a world that has always been the privilege of the rich and free. I have travelled by plane since the age of thirteen, and although I enjoy the experience of time in another country, I am much more demanding than my parents ever were and I don’t just want more and cheaper travel but also I want the flights and the experience of travel to be improved. What I want is better quality travel; less airport queuing and ridiculous security checks, more room on the aeroplanes and less of a feeling as being as John Lennon once put it “in the cheap seats”. Jane Turner

When I was grieving the death of my Alzheimer's-stricken mother eight years ago here in America, I met (via the computer) an English gentleman who had lost his daughter in a tragic accident. After eight years of notes and letters, I finally flew to Britain this past summer to see my friend (and his wife) in their home in northern England. It was an unforgettable experience that has enriched my life forever. England is a gorgeous place. I am blessed that I was able to see it with my own eyes. Roberta Jasina, Michigan, USA

My father once said to me: 'You know, sometime in your life you will probably travel overseas'. I was amazed. I was about 10 and did not know anyone who had travelled outside Australia. There were no jet aircraft and the ships that came seemed only to bring migrants on one-way tickets. I made my first overseas trip 12 years later, to study at a university in California. I was married there (to my girlfriend who had flown from Australia to join me, after I confirmed that the natives were friendly) and at the end of the academic year we spent a couple of months travelling around the US and then Europe on our around-the-world air tickets. We returned to Sydney and got on with life: building careers, raising children and continuing the shared experience of two people in love who had had a great start to married life. We have travelled often and regularly over the 40 or so years since - on business and for other reasons - but we often look back and talk about that first adventure that taught us so much about the world. We were lucky. Our travels were made possible by the development of jet aircraft and by air fares that were just starting to become reasonable. Since then, fares have continued to decline and overseas travel has become available to almost everyone who wants it. I believe that in the future this development will be looked upon as a very important change in human experience. Many millions of people will have had their eyes opened to the world, in the way that we had all those years ago. The world will be an immeasurably better place because so many of its inhabitants know more about each other. It would be very sad if this does not continue. If we do need to ration use of carbon fuel, I suggest that air travel will be towards the top of the list of things that we decide to preserve. Ken Nielsen, Sydney

Taking a flight ought to be as easy as catching a bus. Cheaper flights mean the world has become both bigger and smaller as so much more of it is accessible. I like to see the heavens above my humble abode dotted with all manner of aircraft - from the occasional microlite, small monoplane (the ford fiestas of the sky?) and helicopters all the way up to airliners crisscrossing each other. On the odd occasion there have even been flybys of Concorde, Lancaster, Hurricane and Spitfire, to name but a few. Hell, if you're really keen you can even 'see' the International Space Station under favourable conditions. It gladdens me that people take to the sky in even greater numbers and often wonder where these planes are headed to or coming from (I also muse whether their outbound journey is more pleasant than the return as per my last trip abroad when, holiday over, we were penned in like cattle and the in-flight movie was 'The day after tomorrow'!). I even draw some pleasure from hearing the planes decelerate before coming in to land at Leeds/Bradford airport and marvel at all that technology. That said though, I wouldn't wish to live so close to an airport whereby the comings and goings intrude on homelife. Here, I have some sympathy for protesting residents, but the blame lies at the feet of planning authorities. Mark Harrop

In the 1970s and 1980s the closest I had ever got to flying was traveling on the chairlifts from Butlin’s Pwllheli holiday camp to its rocky beach on the Lleyn Peninsula every other two or three summers. While my brothers and I excitedly waggled our legs over the rain swept, plush green Welsh fields with cows below, I could close my eyes and imagine flying off to the then exotic sounding Tenerife or Costa Del Sol where some of my friends went every summer. It wasn’t the giant toy donkeys they brought back that made me envious, neither was it the bronzed skin they sported nor the tales from the 3 star hotels with their own swimming pools (my 3 siblings and I could have far more fun during the last week of the holiday season in North Wales any day) it was the fact they had been on an aeroplane. I couldn’t comprehend how blasé our more ‘well-off’ friends had become about flying, ‘..it’s just like getting a bus’ and ‘…..that’s the boring bit why do you want to know about getting on a plane.’ That’s what they would say when I demanded to know what their flying experiences were like. So when I got my first opportunity to fly I drank it all in. It wasn’t to sunny Spain or the Island Kos, it was a visit to my eldest brother’s far flung cold war outpost of RAF Base Guterslöh, West Germany when I was 12.

Manchester International Airport for the first time was intoxicating. The smell of kerosene in the morning, the sound of rushing Rolls Royce engines on the runway for the first time, my mum and dad’s tartan flask of hot instant coffee wafting through the lounge, the huge Arrivals and Departures boards flicking 24hour times and destinations I’d never even heard of. This was the first time mum, dad and we four youngest in the family had ever been to an airport let alone board an aircraft. The sparrows that managed to fly into the lounge weren’t going to be the only ones flying today I proudly remember thinking. My mouth dried out with anticipation and mother passed out with excitement just after take-off and we laughed much to the horror of the other passengers. We took it in turns to sit in the window seat, after the initial excitement had receded I closed my eyes and imagined the European continentals looking up and admiring my new Adidas trainers waggling over their heads. Other memorable moments of the holiday were organising some of the Air Force base kids who had never ventured into the nearby German civilian estates before to challenge the natives to a World Cup footy final. The Germans were reluctant at first but they got a team together and we hammered them 8-1. With my elder brother’s fancy footwork and my youngest brother playing in goal with a black Fruit Pastille stuck between his nose and top lip we were unstoppable! I saw the bullet holes of the Allied forces weaponry around Köln Cathedral, I walked on one of the dams busted open by the RAF’s bouncing bombs and sat next to a WW2, 8th Army Veteran on the flight back. He told me stories of the desert campaign against Rommel’s Afrika Corps which still make my hair stand on end.

Such memorable experiences could have only been made possible with popular air travel. I never anticipated then that air travel would shape a huge part of my life. I met the love of my life while she was visiting the Europe from Australia. We have settled in tropical Queensland where I ensure marketing, distribution and safe use of life saving cancer treatments and devices and so flying has become a ‘tool of trade’ for me as I single handedly manage a territory five times the size of the UK. Currently I’m saving hard to take my own young family of five from Australia to Europe for the first time, to holiday in Wales again, to see family and friends old and not yet made in June next year. My kids are sick with excitement at the prospect of traveling overseas, I worry that the miserable bastards play acting at mud hut living around Heathrow Airport have more chance of ruining these travel opportunities for my kids and their kids than any ecological disaster ever will. Dom McCarthy, Brisbane, Australia

I can count on one hand the amounts of flights I have taken in my 42 years. I have a long way to travel yet to become a truly 'global citizen'. So I guess, on the face of it, I'd be an ideal candidate for the camp at Heathrow, and the 'future' of a low carbon emitting culture in general. But it was the real lived experience of those handful of flights and my visits to London that have left an indelible mark and a profound sense of what it is to be human. It is when I visit London (as in my home town of Sheffield we have no airports, and planes appear as mere specks in the vast ocean that is the sky) that this feeling of wonderment comes to the forefront of my mind and holds me transfixed in awe as I walk the streets in which planes seem to fly so low in the sky; it feels like you could just reach out and touch them, and see the windows out of which you can almost glance the passengers gazing down as I gaze on in excitement at the thrill of air travel. As I look up it feels like the plane is suspended in slow-motion and I experience the frisson that, god forbid, at any minute it might fall out of the sky. As nature as yet to produce something on such a scale to fly. For that reason I guess it will never feel quite 'natural'. Of course, the short and apparently mundane response would be that we have just mastered the forces of nature in order to keep a lump of metal and hundreds of passengers in the sky. Though I find it hard to dispel the feeling that something approaching magic is unfolding before your eyes. As you sit on the plane defying gravity, all perspective changes as you look down through the window on the world where people no longer look as they do close-up but move about ant-like and drive along whole networks of inter connecting roads or arteries that you can see from one end to the other in vehicles that you can no long identify but merely see as moving to somewhere; as you are too. You are no longer anchored to the earth, but suspended in space as though by string like those toy planes use to be in my childhood bedroom.

You're traveling at speeds and eating up miles and reaching destinations in times (but can we get there faster and cheaper, please) that would be impossible on the ground. You are no longer looking up at or out of reach of the clouds; you are in the lap of the gods, in amongst those fluffs of cotton wool. You can see whole cities in one glance which at night are magically transformed by pulsating electricity into great beacons of light and energy in the darkness like some distant stars and galaxies tempting you on; whole stretches of coast, lines of land masses and islands that you have only seen on paper maps. You can see a sea of patch-work quilts of fields in differing colours where farmers, ant-like, work to produce the food which the air hostess brings to you on a plate. You can see whole areas of vast housing estates where the jostling and bustling, teaming populous live out our lives. From such a high distance, you get a feeling for the macro workings of our lives. And that down there, as up in the clouds, we are all working to make all this happen. If this is life, then I would like more of it. Indeed: "Fly me to the moon and let me play amongst the stars." And just maybe we might find there even more inspiration to bring home with us. So it is with a sullen heart (and shame on those) to see a camp erected which would seek to banish such 'magic' from our lives. Simon Graham

I am going back into the long and distant past - 1956 to be precise. We had been placed in a children's home in Swansea (1955) due to my mother's illness and whilst awaiting our parents' settling in to service life abroad in Singapore. My brother (7 years) sister (5 years) and self (9 years) were allowed to join them a year later (1956) - on our epic memorial first flight. On a day in August we were taken, by train, from South Wales to London by one of the homes Sisters - to our great Aunt's in London. Here we stayed for a week and I had my 9th birthday. On the morning of our epic flight our youngest great aunt Nell took us into London town to catch the coach to Heathrow. Here she asked a female passenger to watch out for us on the flight as we were to travel alone under the protection of the stewardess. After waving our aunt goodbye (she had been dropped of from the coach en-route to the airport) we duly watched the country side go by and I can remember how bored we were. Not knowing where or how we were travelling to meet up with our parents. The flight took 3 days - my poor sister cried as the engines roared into life - we had been told not to unfasten our seat belts and I so wanted to cuddle my sister. However the kind lady whom my Aunt Nell had asked to look after us undid her seat belt (which I thought was very daring) and put my sister on her lap. To keep amused the younger two were allowed to wander a little, up and down the plane, to the amusement of the single servicemen who petted them - whilst ever an obedient child, I kept asking if I could do anything to kill the boredom - and alleviate my air sickness, whilst staying in my seat.

We had two overnight stops and I chose for us all to sleep together in one room - they allowed that the first stop and then my sister went into another room for the seond stop. We got warmer and warmer as we travelled to the far east. On arrival we had to change into our special summer cloths before embarking. On descending the plane, in the early dusky evening, the heat hitting us and making us gasp, I grabbed the hands of my brother and sister and followed the air hostess into the terminal. We were stood there in a line waiting for what - we didn't know - other than to stand there. I then saw my father signing a document not far in front of us - and I started shouting - he couldn't hear, or it was the broad Welsh accents we had picked up he didn't recognise. Then looking around, I saw our mother waving frantically at us through a grilled and barred door - I pointed her out to the others and we just waved back. How we reached the room our parents were in I cannot remember - all I know is that the other two took flight to our parents - and me - I wanted too, but I thought I was to grown up to do that. So I walked sedately up to them stopping myself running as the other two had - and just looked up and grinned as my brother was cuddled by dad and my sister by mum. We were then taken home by their friends - the long route, as they had never heard of children travelling alone to meet their parents - we were so tired. Apparently we were the first forces children to travel alone under the protection of the stewardess. I can remember the flight, the excitement, the sickness, the boring bits and the final destination to this day many years (51) later and having just turned 60 years of age it brings it all back. Margaret Gardener (nee Speight)

In the Fall of 1994, I flew to Hungary with a church group. We were delivering medicines to a Hungarian village in Transylvania. There were many firsts for me: my first visit to Eastern Europe; my first exposure to Gypsies; my first exposure to Romanian Orthodox churches. I got to see Transylvania with my own eyes. Mostly farmland, actually. We stayed in a village that only had outhouses. We learned, firsthand, the dubious benefits of Ceaucescu's car, the Dacia (rhymes with Gotcha). My first response when seeing Gypsies was, 'who stuck these Guatemalan people in the middle of Eastern Europe?' for that's who they looked like. We stayed in Budapest for an extra day and a half. I toured the Buda castle, Bartok's home in Buda, and Heroes' Square in Pest. It was a shame to see so many American chain stores in Budapest, but it still retains its unique character. At night I attended a conference of Hungarian/Gypsy music and dance. This was my first exposure to a cimbalom, basically a large hammer dulcimer on legs. The streetcar and subway systems are excellent. All of this was made possible by airlines and air travel. The Greens would have us all be provincial and ignorant. They are the closest we have to a real fascist movement. The 20th-century legacy fascists are not as much of a problem. Tikhon Gilson

I live on the remote edge of NW Ireland, far from cultural hubs. For most of my life, the closest I got to great music was radio or a recording and I fed my imagination with books which were a lot cheaper than travel. I reared a family on a single low income and our carbon footprint on the planet was minimal because we couldn't afford a big footprint. Then came cheap flights out of Knock, a little mountain top airport in Mayo. Suddenly the world was on my doorstep. My retirement pension was sufficient to take me to places I had only dreamed of. I got my first passport and since then I've been to the opera in Prague, I've visited art galleries in Pari/s and Madrid and I've seen ballet for the very first time, in Covent Garden and the State Opera House in Budapest. There have been a lot of magical moments. The most overwhelming was disembarking from the vaporetto beside Saint Mark's square in Venice. I stood there and cried, it was so unbelievable that I should ever find myself in the middle of all that magnificence. Cheap flights have opened the treasures of our world to ordinary people, not just the rich. Long may they continue. Mary Lally

My very first flight was a long-haul journey to Tokyo, where I lived and studied for a year. I also used Tokyo as a base to visit Northeast and Southeast Asia. That year in Asia literally changed my life, opening my eyes to new ideas, different cultures and philosophies. The friends I made from around the world that year are among my closest. Being in a very alien environment challenged me to grow and develop in ways I would never otherwise have done. As a result of my experiences, I embarked on an academic career, studying Asia: a lifetime's work, and it all started with a flight. I remember, as a working-class kid, turning off TV shows like 'Wish You Were Here', seeing the idea of trips to exotic locations as a pointless fantasy - but now, especially with cheaper aviation, it's a reality for many people for the first time. The clock should never be turned back. I want as many people as possible to have exciting, life-enhancing experiences, as I was fortunate enough to have, made possible through flight - really one of the great liberating marvels of the modern age. Lee Jones

Back in the early 90s I taught English in Madrid for 18 months. Being pre-budget airline days, scheduled flights to Spain from the UK back then were in the region of £200 - £300. When I moved back in 1992 I couldn't afford to visit friends in Madrid that often. Over the last 10 -15 years the cost of flights has fallen dramatically and I'm able to return more frequently. I've been over for short and long weekends, weddings, christenings, birthdays and, the big environmental target, a stag-do. Largely thanks to cheap airfares I've retained my friendships and developed others, seen my friend's children grow up and improved on my rusty Spanish. I've seen exhibitions and performances I wouldn't have had access to and expanded my knowledge of Spanish literature, music, food and wine. Many is the long lunch or late night drinking session chewing the fat and putting the world to rights. In short, those things that make us truly human. Continuing the Spanish theme, I've recently helped set up an ERASMUS link with the University I lecture at and a University in Spain. Low cost airlines have helped keep the link alive: reducing the cost and time travelling between institutions. The programme enables Spanish students to study in the UK and a British student to go to Spain. I also get to go across and lecture at the partner institution. For the students, this is an opportunity to develop themselves both in their studies and as individuals. For me, it helps develop professional links and offers new challenges. All of this is made easy and possible by the reduced cost of flying. Yet much of my travel would be deemed 'un-necessary' by environmental protesters. Far better, they would say, to holiday at home and be more aware of the local. To me it is this social side of air travel is strikingly absent from the environmental agenda, because it is seen as un-necessary or - in other words - unimportant. Peter Smith

The bastions of liberal democracy, free will and tolerance are scattered round the earth, from Canada, to Australia and New Zealand as well as the EU. It is unrealistic to maintain close contact between these countries by ship and bicycle. I suspect that the enemies of the freedom of flight are also the enemies of the freedom of thought. Michael Baum

The invention of aeroplanes is, in my opinion, one of the greatest inventions. I have had the opportunity to travel to countries in Europe that I would never have thought about visiting. This has enabled me to broaden my horizons and to no longer be ignorant about other cultures. As for having 'lovers in far flung places', I am visiting mine next week for only £20 return! I am looking forward to the new aircraft designs, that will enable us to travel to Australia in only 4 hours! Stuart Mack

I am married to a Swede, and probably would not be were it not for the cheap flights that enabled us to continue our romance. Our five-year-old twins are able to visit their Swedish relatives regularly and for no more than the cost of a train ride. I am continually staggered at the hypocrisy of the middle-class bien pensants who nod sagely at the supposed need to curb air travel while happily flying off to their Tuscan villa holidays. If swingeing taxes were able to stop us doing the things we love, then we’d be a nation of non-driving, non-smoking teetotallers. Ross Welford

I live in Israel, a very small country, wherever you go you meet someone you know, friends of relatives, relatives of friends -- it's stifling. For a long time, all our land borders were with actively hostile (as in state of war) countries. The only outlet was to get on a plane. We are now at peace with Jordan and Egypt; Jordan is quite close by, but even there flying is the only sensible way to get to Cairo. And if it weren't for convenient and frequent flights, how could we have had visits from Madonna, Michel Jackson, and host of others, as well as world famous symphony orchestras, soloists and conductors (and we return the compliment). This past July, we had one of our usual labor disputes and the trades unions called a strike, but excepted our international airport so as not to disappoint families looking forward to their annual getaway. That is what I call a firm grasp of essentials. Nina Kellman