Country Mouse: Giles Wood - A wolf among sheeple on my night flight

How long will it be before overweight airline customers like me will be weighed along with their luggage and compelled to pay for two seats on budget airlines? The sardine-can-like conditions of my short-haul aisle seat from Klagenfurt to Stansted seemed worse than usual, owing to my recent fondness for breakfast croissants with black-cherry compote, a balm in troubled times. It meant, as part of a cohort of other overweight Britons, that I hardly had room to fold down my tray for my warm gin and tonic without ice. There wasn’t any of the latter on our ‘no frills’, two-hours-delayed night fright. Or have I spelt that wrong? My editor was sat – to use common parlance – on the opposite aisle seat and, being taller than the average Briton, his legs struggled to find repose as the passenger in front had put hand luggage under her seat. As he...

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