I was hoping to save money on a flight for an imminent holiday, and watched gleefully as prices duly tumbled from £500 to £425 from an online travel agent. My usual high street travel agent couldn’t match that, but agreed to cut a deal at £440. I feel I was right to support a business that has always given efficient and helpful service, but friends say I’ve lost out. Have I?
It’s true that the world’s yearning to hop on a plane and fly to the other side of the world has shrunk recently. For many, flying is now less enticing even than it was when the main deterrent to undertaking a long flight was knowing that at around 2am the passenger in the seat in front would suddenly recline his seat so far back that you could check his scalp for nits.
Then came fear of terrorists. This resulted in long security checks and passengers having to take a sip from any liquid they were planning to take on board in order to prove that it wasn’t toxic. (But would it rattle a suicide bomber to sip a toxic chemical, seeing as how he would be expecting to die in a couple of hours anyway?) Now it’s snakes on a plane.
All in all, plane tickets are not the prize they once were. But loyalty is — and all the more so when everyone around you seems to be dismissing it as the currency of losers. People who buy on price alone tend to get served strictly by the yard: not an inch too little, but not an inch too much, either. Do you have a moral obligation to buy from anyone but the cheapest seller? No. But cheapness is a crude yardstick for life: one high-tariff phone call to the understaffed complaints department of some budget airlines might swallow any saving on a fare. Your travel agent will remember your loyalty long after you’ve forgotten the extra £15 it cost you.
Advertisement
FACING A DILEMMA
Have you a dilemma of your own?
modernmorals@thetimes.co.uk