Even though deep vein thrombosis has become the big scare of the moment, it's nothing new to many frequent business travellers the world over. A friend who works in a big City law firm and spent most of the Nineties on a shuttle to New York once confided that nobody doing a similar job in his office had survived beyond their early fifties. The pressure of work combined with the savage air travel regime week in, week out, had taken a terrible toll.
Travelling in business class regularly in the Nineties, I used to be amazed at how many travellers refused the welcome champagne. I was always especially impressed by the American women changing out of padded shoulders and into shell suits, kicking off their heels and popping their feet up on a stack of briefcases before drinking lots of water. Meanwhile the flight attendants would be heaving their trolleys up the gangway laden with fatty cheeseboards and fine wines. They were intent on offering the maximum amount of alcohol. I used to look around at the complete stupidity of the situation - lavish food and drink coming at the passengers from every angle - while the road warriors fended it off with their imaginary shields.
What has changed is that now holidaymakers are just as aware as experienced road warriors of the dangers of travelling in cooped-up conditions for long periods. Suddenly large numbers of passengers are stretching and walking around the cabin (often obscuring the in-flight movie), gulping gallons of mineral water and changing into DVT-socks.
Companies such as Austravel report that many more passengers to Australia are booking stopovers in the Far East. Tour operators are seeing ordinary holidaymakers shell out thousands of pounds of their own money to upgrade to premium economy and executive cabins with more leg room.
It's interesting that airlines are looking at putting DVT warnings on flight tickets. But why don't they just banish the booze? We already have smoke-free flights and the day cannot come quickly enough when there are alcohol-free ones, too. Heavy drinking in a confined space on a long flight does no good to the circulation and people like me would find it much easier to fly in a healthy fashion if they weren't continually tempted to drink alcohol. Flying is pretty boring and getting hammered is one way to ease the tedium.
Maybe the big airlines could use the millions of pounds saved on Bollinger and vintage wines on spacing out the seats to give us a bit more leg room in economy class, something that American Airlines has already done (it's ripped out 7,000 seats across its fleet to give a seat pitch of between 34 and 36 inches rather than the industry norm of 31 to 32 inches).
A spokeswoman said the airline wasn't going alcohol-free yet. 'One of the US senators has suggested that, but we are not planning this at the moment,' she said.
But don't be surprised when someone else spots an opportunity and launches Dry Airways. It won't be long coming.
