Why you should consider a different kind of travel this summer

Whenever I’m out there banging the drum for flight-free travel – which I do frequently, having pledged to stop flying myself since November 2019 – I’m usually met by one, impossible-to-dismiss argument. “But getting the train is five times the price!” people cry – and, depending on their journey, they’re usually right.

It’s not that most travellers enjoy getting on a plane, and it frequently isn’t even about the fact that slow travel is, well, slower. And holidaymakers increasingly care about their carbon footprints and want to make greener choices: Booking.com’s Sustainable Travel Report 2022 reported that 81 per cent of UK travellers said sustainable travel was important to them, and 71 per cent wanted to travel more sustainably this year.

What it comes down to, at the end of the day, is cost.

The proliferation of budget airlines in the UK – the sheer wealth of competition and smorgasbord of possible destinations – meant we got used to being able to snag a short-haul flight to some fabulous European destination for the same price as a two-course meal at a high-street restaurant. With such bargains to be had, who could blame pre-pandemic Brits for jetting off whenever the mood took them?

Times, however, have changed. This summer is the first since coronavirus took hold in 2020 that we can get away in relatively hassle-free fashion, with a vast range of destinations once again offering restriction-free entry: no forms, tests, quarantine or even proof of vaccination required. Consequently, demand has gone through the roof – and airlines have gone into meltdown.

Staff shortages after pandemic lay-offs, compounded by Brexit and employee illness as the latest Covid wave hit the UK, have seen swathes of flight cancellations from easyJet and British Airways. The latter announced this week that 10,300 more services would be axed between now and the end of October, bringing the total number of flights scrapped this summer to around 30,000. That’s 4.5 million seats that have been taken off the market.

The upshot? Aside from the more than a million passengers already affected by the cancellations, it means that remaining flight prices are skyrocketing as demand outstrips supply. Research from The Independent’s travel correspondent, Simon Calder, found that a one-way BA ticket from London Gatwick to Alicante on Spain’s Costa Blanca on Friday 22 July cost £555; the final remaining seat on one flight from Heathrow to Nice on Thursday 7 July was selling for £1,181.

Please don’t think I’m celebrating this fact – I hugely feel for holidaymakers, desperate to get away and spend time with loved ones in other countries, in many cases for the first time in three years.

What I am saying is this: right now, flying might not be the cheapest option (or the price difference could be so negligible as to not make much difference). Aside from the catastrophic emissions from aviation, aside from the unpleasantness of lengthy security queues and baggage chaos seen at UK airports in recent weeks, boarding a plane might not even save you money this summer.

So it could just be the perfect time to consider the alternatives: a one-way Eurostar ticket from London to Paris can be snagged for £59.50 on 22 August; a one-way ferry crossing from Portsmouth to Guernsey in the Channel Islands is selling for £40 at the end of July; and a ferry from Plymouth to Santander in Northern Spain for a 10 August sailing costs just £99.

With air fares continuing to soar, maybe 2022 is the year to finally slow things down and swap sky for land and sea.

Yours,

Helen Coffey

Travel editor