Londonist was astounded to read that tiny Air Scotland are planning budget flights from Stansted to Baghdad by November. Call us cynical, but the words ‘disaster’, ‘recipe’ and ‘for’ immediately spring to mind. Now, we’ve headed to the arse-end of nowhere on budget flights before, but flying to a place where your head might end up nowhere near your arse-end is in a different league. The Iraqi-born head of Air Scotland, Mr Dhia Al-Ani, had these reassuring words for potential customers:
“We obviously won't be flying through hails of bullets and missiles and giving parachutes to passengers, but I'm very hopeful the situation will be much calmer by November.”
You can’t knock his optimism, but has this man never visited Essex? He continues:
“Already there are flights going into Baghdad from Jordan and Dubai with no problems. The only tricky bit is getting to the airport.”
Yes, getting to the airport. That’s an ability we always look for when choosing our carrier. It’s never convenient to have to jump out when the plane can’t make it. We may be misunderstanding him for comedy effect, but the plan still sounds somewhat madcap. Next thing you know, Branson will be extending his aviation empire into outer space! What? Oh.
