The very first time anyone travels by air has to be, on the whole, a fairly exciting experience. Well apart, perhaps, from those that are terrified. I know my first trip, to Vancouver as it happens when I was just 20, was exciting. It was new, different and who can forget their very first take-off? But by the time I was over Greenland the whole thing was beginning to pall. And now, having lost count of the flights taken over the years, the whole prospect is one of gloom. It’s bad enough, for me, fighting the A1 and M25 traffic just to get to Heathrow. And that’s before you scramble your way to the check-in and then spend what feels like hours hanging around a busy shopping mall waiting for the bloody plane to take off. And don’t get me started on the boredom of sitting on a plane for hours only to get disgorged into another snake-like queue at immigration and passport control. It’s soul destroying.

And now, with all the rumpus and added security checks – it just became the one thing I’m not sure I ever really want to do again. Except I will of course. Because I like the bit in between the two flights.

What nobody seems to have said during the current heightened security and resultant squash of too many people in too small a space, is that it might just be the time to re-think the whole procedure between arriving at the airport this end and walking out with your luggage the other end. Let’s face facts – it doesn’t really work that well for anyone and having personally been in situations of cancelled flights, delayed flights, striking cabin crew, ice in the engine and a bomb scare at JFK it’s obvious that it only takes the smallest of problem to throw an entire airport and its carefully planned schedule out to sea without a life raft. I really do think we need a new way of doing this.

So this is what I’d like to see. I drive or take public transport to an out of town collection area where I park up and ‘check in’ at any time I want to prior to a cut-off time for my flight. Doesn’t matter what airline or what flight – just lots of desks and no big queues. They can perform their security check on me and my luggage right there. I climb into a big box with a bed in it and into the box goes my luggage. They close the lid and pump it full of anaesthetic. When I wake up I am being greeted at my destination with a nice cup of tea and given the keys to my hire car or tickets for the bus. No queues. No sitting around for hours getting sweaty, uncomfortable and irritable. No seats that I have to spend hours in that are just big enough for the average squirrel. In fact, no passenger planes at all as we are just cargo. They can pack more of us in and don’t have to continually ply us with lukewarm orange juice.

And the best of all? No in-flight meals!