What everyone is talking about this week: MAGA (Make Airports Great Again)
Once proud institutions have fallen into disrepute.
Pity the man who never got to fly on Concorde. Your correspondent was but four when the aircraft was discontinued and, akin to many, has been awaiting the return of supersonic flight with glee. Let us rejoice, for a successor has finally landed: the European Space Agency is currently developing a jet called Invictus that aims to travel at five times the speed of sound. This, we are told, will deliver passengers from London to Sydney in only three hours.
Against these soaring ambitions stand our airports: once-proud institutions that have, in recent years, become pandemonium. Practically no one enjoys them anymore. Two-thirds of the British public believe they are overcrowded and, according to Sail Croatia, three of our main hubs — Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow — rank among the five most stressful airports on Earth.
The EU’s new Entry-Exit-System, reliant on biometric data, has been blamed for a recent hike in delays and missed flights. During the US government shutdown at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta earlier this year, paid entertainers were hired to alleviate tensions among those facing superqueues — a strategy akin to putting out a fire with a comedy skit.
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If aerospace engineers are capable of building a jet that reaches Mach 5, you’d think that those in charge of our airports would manage to improve things here and there. As David Mitchell says: It's not rocket science. Yet the decline appears terminal. There is perhaps no better metonym for it than the screens that appear after security with four smiley faces, ranging from happy (green) to irate (red): a lazy substitute for adequate staff training. Indeed, a 2025 report from the device’s parent company showed that, even on the best of days, more than one in ten travellers said they’d had a bad time.
With a fall in service comes a fall in glamour — not for lack of trying from some. Designer Anya Hindmarch now has a shop, Air Anya, selling luggage tags and passport holders reminiscent of the 1970s. If only the people at the airport check-in counter were even half as fun. Instead, I have been forced to watch as British Airways asks Gold members to check in hand-luggage small enough to serve as Playmobil.
Isolated attempts at progress are often futile. Where London has done away with the 100ml limit on carry-on liquids, others have not: a fact worth remembering as people plan to bring home large bottles of Factor-50 for the next heatwave. These will be confiscated, unless one remembers to put this in the suitcase that BA has made them surrender as cargo. A more capacious overhaul is needed. I’d put the engineers in charge.
This feature originally appeared in the July 1, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
