Abbreviations

Introduction

Hello. My name’s Helen and I’m a frequent flyer. It’s been … two and a half years since my last flight.

Boy, does it feel strange to write that.

How did I get here? I suppose I could blame my job. Being a travel journalist isn’t exactly conducive to keeping both feet on the ground. But heck, it wasn’t all for work – what about those minibreaks to Mallorca, the weekends in Rome, that anniversary jaunt to Edinburgh (taken by plane because the train cost three times the price)? I have to take some responsibility here.

By the end, I was flying almost once a week. Twenty-four flights in six months, with no plans to stop or even cut down. Moscow to Malaga, Ljubljana to Lisbon, Doha to Dublin – I was insatiable. My toiletry bag was permanently packed; I could quote the EU261 air passenger rights regulations in my sleep.

But then, just like that, something inside me changed.

It’s May 2019 and I’m scrolling through my news feed looking for travel stories when I stumble across a word I’ve never seen before: flygskam. It’s a funny-sounding word. Clunky. Inelegant. Vaguely comical. Not the sort of word you’d suspect was about to kick you arse-first down the rabbit hole and into one of the biggest adventures of your life.

Flygskam, it turns out, literally translates to ‘flight shame’. Like many of the best things, the concept was invented by the Scandinavians and is the de facto name of the flight-free movement in Sweden. Yes, I quickly discover that a heap of prominent Swedes – including teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and her mother, opera singer Malena Ernman – have simply stopped flying for environmental reasons. Corresponding new vocab has sprung up around it, from tagskryt (‘train brag’, denoting when people share pictures of their train journeys on social media) to smygflyga (‘flying in secret’ – presumably done due to the aforementioned shame).

I read and read and read some more and decide, like any good journalist, to investigate further in the name of #content. Why don’t I talk to some of these nut jobs?, I think. Maybe we have some of our own? Maybe the Swedish movement has made its way across the North Sea (by boat, or perhaps Zeppelin) to produce some homegrown, dyed-in-the-wool weirdos right here in the UK?

At no point do I suspect there is even the slightest possibility I’ll end up becoming one of them.

A quick internet search yields several names, one of which is Anna Hughes. She’s the founder of the Flight Free UK movement, set up to encourage Brits to commit to giving up flying for a year. What, really give up? Like, totally give up? Like, not-even-allowed-a-cheeky-last-minute-city-break-to-Prague give up? Bit intense, that.

An hour later I’m dialling her number. An hour after that, I’m putting the phone down. An hour after that, I’m still reeling from what feels akin to a religious conversion: my aviation epiphany, let’s call it.

Spring 2019 was a time when the UK’s Extinction Rebellion protests were in full swing, David Attenborough had stopped beating around the bush and pretty much admitted the world was on fire and our actions were murdering all the lovely animals, and Greta Thunberg had become an established household name, gracing the covers of magazines and touring Europe by train to speak on the coming climate catastrophe (all while being mercilessly trolled by prominent right-wingers – including the actual president of the United States – who thought it completely appropriate to hurl insults at a child). It was becoming increasingly apparent that without wholesale, radical change driven by the world’s politicians, business leaders and wealthy, agenda-setting elite, we didn’t have a hope in hell of achieving even the least ambitious target of the 2016 Paris Agreement: to limit global warming to well below 2°C more than pre-industrial levels.

Although I was on the periphery of it all, I wholeheartedly supported these campaigners – I remember feeling empowered and excited that people were taking a real stand, alongside an unformed yearning to join them somehow. And yet, despite it all, I hadn’t for a second considered how flying contributed to the whole climate change picture, nor even once reflected on how my actions as an extremely frequent flyer might be having an impact. I spent considerably more time debating which was the worst London airport (Stansted, obviously) than I ever did thinking about my personal carbon footprint. It wasn’t until that one conversation with Anna that I could see how it all joined up – how putting my ‘need’ to travel cheaply and easily before everything else might not be completely … OK. Not now. Not the way things were going.

This was supposed to be the story of how I, a travel journalist – someone whose job it is to travel the world – managed to go flight-free for, as it turned out, more than an entire year. (Lockdowns sucked but they sure did cure me of my initial air-travel FOMO.) But it’s not just my story. It’s the story of every unsung hero who has sacrificed their own pleasure, convenience, time and, inevitably, money – all because they believe the planet is worth more. I’d never have taken on the challenge if it weren’t for their example; I’d never have discovered the true extent of the damage caused by air travel if it weren’t for their patient re-education.

Kicking the flying habit isn’t easy. It’s challenging and frustrating and – yes – can be bloody expensive. Yet, for all that, it’s so much more than a sacrifice: it’s an opportunity. One that offers the chance to stop, to stare, to breathe in and view the world anew. Forgive me a moment of toe-curling earnestness; ‘it’s about the journey, not the destination’ may be the biggest cliché in the book, but sometimes clichés are clichés because, well, they’re true.

Hello. My name is Helen, and I was a frequent flyer. But not anymore. And, hopefully, never again.