Simon Calder: The Man Who Pays His Way

Why map-reading makes me nervous

Like most cyclists, I feel relaxed about flying. A quick spin around Marble Arch or along the East Lancs Road scores far higher on the risk scale than flying. But towards the end of a long flight, when not every traveller is in full command of their senses, should the inflight "sky maps" be quite so graphic?

Sky maps are popular with travellers. When you are at 37,000 feet and cocooned from the alien environment of minus 60 degrees outside, it is comforting to see how your location relates to the rest of the planet. These days, American Airlines' technology is so sophisticated that its inflight screens show even the terrain that your aircraft is flying over.

The problem is: the pictures are just too, well, graphic. They remind me of those images that appear in newspapers and on TV news, reconstructing every plane crash. On a flight from Heathrow to Chicago, anyone with a vivid imagination (and plenty of us without such a gift) could be forgiven for visualising their imminent demise: in the frozen wastes of northern Ontario, on Canada's Mackinac Island, or spoiling plenty of Native Americans' days by making premature contact with the planet in the middle of the Isabella Indian Reservation in Michigan, which appears on screen as you approach Chicago.

The rational traveller realises that flying is extremely safe and that none of these outcomes is remotely likely. But eight hours into a flight, the sky map can cause irritation because of the way the computer graphics count down the distance to the arrival airport.

"Chicago 4 miles," reads the screen. Since the aircraft is still at around 8,000 feet, passengers whose brains are still in gear could infer an ambitious rate of descent. In fact, the flight plan involves going past O'Hare airport and turning around to land into the wind. But the effect is like a golf putt that overshoots the hole and leaves you frustratingly further away.

In the olden days, just five years ago, the pilot on a westbound American Airlines jet would mark the intended course on an aeronautical chart. Passengers looked at the map, then passed it on to their neighbour, and so on around the cabin. The psychological result was to make passengers feel that their destiny was in safe, human, hands.

Was the sky map switched on during the landing of flight UL 505 approaching Heathrow last Monday morning? If so, it would have made interesting watching. The flight was SriLankan Airlines' arrival from Colombo. Its arrival was chiefly of interest to a couple of hundred of us in Terminal Four because we were planning to fly to the Sri Lankan capital aboard the Airbus.

"Please wait," asked the departure screens, as though we had an element of choice about it. With the afternoon well under way, there was no sign of the plane nor any information about where it might be. Finally, the wayward Airbus taxied towards the terminal. Its self-unloading cargo of passengers trooped off; some of them, I discovered later, may have been a little shaky.

Ninety minutes later, everyone was on board, including an anxious contingent of passengers with connections to make in Colombo. Still no cause was given for the delay. The explanation had to wait for another 10 hours, until the plane was safely on the ground in Sri Lanka. The reason: to be easy on passengers' nerves. "Ladies and gentlemen," began the captain's welcome message. "I'm sorry about the delay, which was caused by the late arrival of the inbound aircraft at Heathrow." At this point, in my experience, most flight crew stop. But this captain admirably continued, to let us know exactly why it had got in late: "Having to make two attempts at landing due to the runway being occupied by another aircraft."

The passengers collectively took a sharp intake of breath as they imagined the scene on board this very aircraft on its final approach to Heathrow, as it suddenly climbed steeply to avoid another plane. It appears that a BMI flight had landed and had hydraulic problems and was stuck on the runway. Even though there appears to have been no danger, that is not the sort of image you would want to dwell upon for a 10-hour flight; no wonder the captain waited until after an uneventful touchdown before telling us.

How can a "go-around", as that Heathrow manoeuvre is known, cause a delay of more than an hour? All too easily, due to the crowded skies (and runways) around Britain's leading airport. Having abandoned its landing, the Airbus was obliged to rejoin the long queue of planes waiting to touch down. As the captain – who is probably unfamiliar with snow – quaintly explained, after that the delay simply "mothballed".

Eighteen months ago, there was plenty happening on the runway of Colombo airport, which doubles as an air-force base. It was the scene of a terrorist attack which destroyed half the SriLankan Airlines fleet. A group of British tourists who were trying to change planes at the time miraculously escaped unharmed. The events wrought rather more havoc on schedules than an aborted landing at Heathrow; and, longer term, the scenes of wrecked aircraft tainted the airline's image. At times of potential conflict, passengers tend to be sensitive about such things – but not always rational. During the Gulf War, there was a wide, er, gulf, between the experiences of the two main airlines serving the region. Emirates, based in Dubai, recorded hardly any decline in bookings. But Gulf Air, whose hub is just 50 miles away in Abu Dhabi, saw its sales "fall off a cliff", as those in the travel industry are prone to say. When the going gets uncertain, the blander the name, the better.

Each airline's sky map, like Soviet cartographers, can show the world from a particular perspective. When flying over the Middle East, you will look in vain on Emirates' or Gulf Air's maps for any mention of the state of Israel. American Airlines, meanwhile, promotes its main hubs. On the map of North America, only five US airports appear: Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami and Seattle, all of them important American Airlines destinations. New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta – where other airlines hold sway – do not appear. And nowhere in Canada is deemed worthy of inclusion. Could this be pique? Canadian Airlines, which previously partnered American in the oneworld alliance, was subsumed two years ago into Air Canada, part of the rival Star Alliance. Instead of Toronto and Vancouver, St George in Bermuda and Bridgetown in Barbados make an appearance. At least they are capital cities, unlike the little-known Brazilian town of Fortaleza, which creeps in at the foot of the screen.

I suspect that one of the engineers who creates sky maps hails from Fortaleza, a beautiful resort on the north-east coast of Brazil. Even on a domestic British Airways flight from Glasgow to London, the sky map gives Fortaleza equal billing to England's and Scotland's largest cities. Enough: another stretch of coastline blessed with broad, empty expanses of white sand and washed by the Atlantic should feature instead. On BA flights to and from Scotland, I look forward to the Outer Hebrides replacing Brazil's tropical coast.

Once you emerge from customs at Colombo airport, the first thing you see is a scale model of Concorde, in the colours of Air France. The supersonic jet is at odds with the Fifties feel of Sri Lanka: at the airport tourist information counter, new arrivals are given maps showing the scale not in miles or kilometers but in chains. And on the roads outside the airport, one of the most visible vehicles is the Routemaster bus. Half a century after its introduction, the classic British double-decker is still in service. How impressive that these developing countries can keep such automotive antiques going. Wait a minute: surface transport in London depends on precisely the same vehicle. What does that say about us?