The golden era of flying is over: rowdy passengers, greedy airlines and miserable airports make travelling nowadays rather grim. The Air India crash in June, which claimed the lives of all but one of the 242 people aboard and 19 others on the ground, has also made many passengers rather jittery, not least because questions remain over what caused the fatal crash. But despite it all, I still love flying.

Almost no one on board took the slightest notice. They were too busy watching their devices

From the very first time I flew to Düsseldorf in the late 1960s for a Christmas stay with friends, I was hooked. In the years since, I’ve flown many times – across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America – but still to this day I’m entranced by the experience of being up there among the clouds, or

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