Islanders have short memories about air fares

People, however, have short memories. Back in my youth I worked for some while for the then local airline BUIA (British United Island Airways), which then morphed into BIA. We flew Dart Heralds in those days and part of my duties in Operations was to issue flight tickets – those were the good old days of handwritten paper tickets. Fares were dictated by the ABC air-fare manual, which covered flights worldwide. Most fares were a fixed price so it was easy to quote and issue tickets.

I can clearly recall issuing many tickets for when we flew to Heathrow as well as many other airports.

It is, however, the Heathrow fares that stick in my mind. There were just two fares, one for immediate issue and one, I think it was called an Apex fare, which was a fare saver for booking some months in advance. The immediate fare was as I remember in the region of £40 each way – this in 1972/3.

Now what is £40 in today’s money? £300, £400? That’s each way, don’t forget.

Annual salaries at that time (if mine was anything to go by) were probably around £1,500pa so an £80 round trip was expensive. But I can’t remember anyone moaning about the prices, as everyone seems to do today.

So with fares now ranging from maybe £70 to a top fare of perhaps £175 for a flight to Gatwick, this would seem to be something of a bargain compared to those of years ago. Don’t forget, of course, we have modern, safe aircraft, easy check-in, computerised bookings – travel anywhere in the world at the click of a button and so on. Airline operating costs have increased dramatically over the years so fares in real terms have in effect probably reduced considerably. But I suspect the moans will continue.

Name and address withheld.