If you have ever caught a latish flight home from abroad then you will be familiar with the potential hassle of having to check-out of your accommodation several hours before your connection to the airport is due to arrive. Thus it was at the end of a recent holiday my wife and I took to Paphos in Cyprus. Check-out was at noon. Our lift to the airport was not until 6 o’clock. The hotel was generous. We could not stay in our room but we could use one of the hotel’s more basic amenities so that we could shower and change clothes before our flight. Moving from a room on the second floor, we were now at ground level. On the first floor. We were allocated Room 102. A photo of the door of its immediate Orwellian neighbour is shown on the home page.

To exit Cyprus, UK passport holders can use electronic gates, as shown here – although that is not the end of the story

You may have noticed recently that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, received a substantial amount of criticism and/or credit (depending on the commentator’s political perspective) for his agreement with the European Union which should see the UK become more aligned with the EU than at any point since Brexit. One element of this, yet to be fleshed out, is to do with the ease of travel between the UK and continental Europe. Already Cyprus has gone some way along these lines. As a UK passport holder, I could use the airport’s electronic gates, as I can when entering the UK. The difference is that in Cyprus the machine didn’t simply scan my image and let me through. It gave me a print-out of that image…which I then took to a person sitting behind a desk, who then stamped my passport. It was not immediately apparent what efficiency had been achieved by this. Hey-ho!

I’m finding this happening increasingly often to me these days – taking a bus to board the plane (although Paphos Airport doesn’t have any embarking arms)

Of course, the other prospective inconvenience of a late flight is the increased likelihood of getting a departure later than scheduled, given that a whole day’s air traffic has been occupying the skies above Europe. Fortunately that didn’t happen on this occasion and we touched down at Gatwick at pretty much precisely the time we were expected to land. To land safely on time – you can’t really ask for more than that!

Robert Green