The Man Who Pays His Way: What separates the no-frills scrum and the gilt-edged few? A corridor

By 11am on Monday of this half-term week, the security supervisor at Stansted had his work cut out. "Can you work an extra hour for double pay?" Staff who had clocked in at the Essex airport before dawn were being bribed to stay on longer, which at least shows some desire to deal with the lines for security. "Lines", though, was not quite the word: so long and meandering were they that the whole check-in area had become a single, amorphous scrum. I was lucky: from the end of the particular frond that I chose, getting through security took only half an hour. To alleviate delayed flight departures, money was being thrown at security staff to delay their own departures.

"FINAL CALL" yelled the screens about Ryanair flight 372 to Biarritz. The exact translation from Ryanese on this occasion was, " Your plane hasn't landed yet, so you're going to be at least half an hour late, but we want you hanging around at the gate anyway". Plenty of time to see what else was happening at the hub of the world's leading airline: Ryanair now carries more passengers across international borders than any other, unless you count Air France and KLM as a single airline (which, corporately, they are).

Late-notice gate changes provide plenty of scope for commotion in the midst of confusion. At the last minute, the Carcassonne flight was switched away from Gate 43 in favour of a departure to north-west Germany.

As a hard-pressed member of Ryanair's ground staff struggled to control an unstable queue of "self-loading cargo" (as some in the airline world describe us passengers), she resorted to yelling at the waiting passengers "This is BREMEN!".

"Isn't," insisted a wag in the queue. "It's Stansted."

Sadly, Stansted would prove the final destination for more than 150 travellers who fondly believed they were just two hours away from Italy. As they waited at the gate, their flight to Pisa was cancelled because of a strike by ground handlers at the destination. They had endured trial-by-Stansted for naught.

How different the experience will be, starting on Tuesday, for 1,200 lucky travellers each day from Heathrow Terminal Three. You probably know this terminal, the most important at Europe's busiest international airport. It looks like a conglomeration of car parks, some of which are kitted out to resemble an airport. Over the past few months, life for those of us unfortunate enough to use it has got markedly worse. "Improvement work" has made it feel as though chunks of the car parks have been demolished at random, with some replaced by marquees of the kind usually found at wedding receptions.

As a piece of retro design, this concept harks back neatly to the opening of the airport in 1946, when the terminals comprised a row of tents. But in the 21st century, some travellers are looking for something a little more comfortable. Which is why dozens of journalists were summoned to witness the opening of a... corridor.

It is, arguably, the most exquisite corridor in the world, on several levels. First, Joe Ferry and his design team at Virgin Atlantic have applied ambition and imagination to create an elegant passageway at odds with the clumsy, makeshift feel of Heathrow. Next, to walk along it marks you out as part of an aeronautical élite: an Upper Class passenger on Virgin, or a gold-level member of the airline's Flying Club (categories that enjoy considerable overlap). Best of all, it is a Narnia-like aisle that whisks travellers back to the days when flying was the preserve of the very rich, and helps them to evade what one headline calls "Heathrow Hell".

The "Upper Class Wing", as it is officially called, is at the top of the curving ramp that lifts your courtesy limousine away from the swirl of traffic and humanity at ground level. By the time you are dropped off, your boarding pass and luggage tags will be printed. As your bags are weighed on invisible scales (built into the pavement), you begin the quick march through the corridor.

Thirty seconds is all it should take before you reach a dedicated security check. With an average of slightly below one traveller a minute passing through the control point, a significant wait is unlikely. Having circumvented the escalators, passages and queues that the rest of us suffer, in no time at all you are thrust into the retail frenzy that is "airside " at Terminal Three. But if you contrive to dodge the perfumes and potions, you can be safely inside the Virgin Clubhouse within a few minutes of arriving at the airport. It may not be quite the "world's fastest airport check-in", as billed by Virgin (that prize goes to the airstrips in Kenya's Maasai Mara, where there is no check-in; if your name is on the pilot's list, you're on board within seconds). But it will transform the airport experience.

For those of us who don't make the gilt-edged 1,200, there is some light at the end of the corridor. By December, Terminal Three's Piazza should be open, so life for passengers on Virgin and other airlines should be vastly improved. Just in time, too. Virgin is vulnerable to new competition when "open skies" between the UK and US takes effect in March. Already, Delta is set to launch flights from Heathrow to New York JFK, Virgin's prime route. Air France has muscled in with a daily Boeing 777 link from Heathrow to Los Angeles starting in April. And with Terminal Five opening on 27 March next year, BA will at last be able to offer its premium customers an appropriately classy experience.

That is why Virgin is pinning its hopes on a corridor that circumvents the stresses of 21st-century air travel.

FLYING INTO THE SUNSET

The finest airport terminal in the world is no longer in use. The gorgeous Art Deco "Beehive", close to the runway at Gatwick, revolutionised air travel when it opened in 1936, offering a seamless train-to-plane experience and providing a model for subsequent airports around the world. For some years it has served as the finest airport HQ in the world, as the home of GB Airways. But the staff who have the good fortune to work amid the light, airy spaces contained within elegant curves may soon be moving to an artless office in Luton.

The reason: the high-quality niche airline, which flies to a range of Mediterranean and North African destinations on behalf of British Airways, has been sold for £103m to easyJet. By April the colour orange will have spread across the fleet, and niceties such as complimentary food and drink, together with assigned seats and the option of Club Europe will have vanished.

British Airways sounded pleased that easyJet had made an approach to GB Airways, allowing BA to end its franchise agreement early: "UK franchises have outlived their purpose," said the chief executive, Willie Walsh – adding for good measure, "We had an option to buy GB Airways but we rejected it".

The takeover will be completed by January, but GB will continue to fly for British Airways until the end of March. That creates the bizarre situation that, for a couple of months, easyJet will be flying BA passengers. The greatest irony: when easyJet began flying in 1994, it had neither aircraft nor crew of its own. Both were leased from the Beehive-based airline: GB Airways.