Travel news review for 2014
Parents were fined for going on holiday, war was declared over in-flight legroom and a pilot even ordered pizza - read our round-up of the year in 2014
12:19PM GMT 24 Dec 2014
What did 2014 mean for travellers? It was a year of nut rage, Knee Defenders and £149 flights to New York; the year when Ryanair tried to win back families and the Government finally acted on cutting sky-high Air Passenger Duty (APD). Here we review some of the major travel stories of the last 12 months.
A mixed bag for families
There was both good and bad news for families, with stricter rules on holidays during term time, meaning that parents could be fined for taking children out of school – and some were. Whether it has changed attitudes remains to be seen; two-thirds of our readers said they would risk a fine in our poll.
But holidays should soon get cheaper for families after this year’s Autumn Statement, in which George Osborne announced that APD for children under 12 will be scrapped from May next year. It will be scrapped for fliers aged under 16 in 2016.
Ryanair's reinvention goes on
Ryanair went one step further than other airlines in promising early refunds to families who had already bought plane tickets for travel after May. It will pay back the child’s tax on tickets from Easter - six weeks before it needs to.
It was the latest attempt by the airline previously voted "most likely to make you tear your hair out" to better itself. Yes, 2014 was the year that Ryanair decided it was time to reform its penny-pinching ways and become one of the good guys.
Customers were allowed a second carry-on bag; the website was made more user-friendly; the supremely annoying on-time jingle was scrutinised; and the idea of painting over the fleet’s garish yellow and blue interiors was mooted in an effort to win the hearts and minds of a sceptical public.
So what actually changed? Queues at the boarding gate have arguably got worse because of the new hand luggage policy and the jingle remains, in fact a new one has been created in time for Christmas.
The cheapest ever transatlantic flights
The biggest news for air passengers was that transatlantic flights got cheaper – at least on the face of it. Norwegian introduced a £149 single fare from London to New York in July, while admitting that fliers would need to book a few months beforehand to find it. Then a £99 flight was offered by Iceland’s WOW air – albeit only for a limited introductory period and with a layover in Reykjavik.
Bad behaviour
Chinese tourists saw more of the world in greater numbers than ever, a consequence of the country’s burgeoning middle class. Such exploration brought with it the odd clash of cultures, however, prompting theChinese government to issue a code of conduct for tourists that advised against spitting and pushing.
Australian tourists were also reprimanded for their behaviour abroad this year. Embassies do not exist in order to pay for prostitutes and first-class seats, warned the country's foreign minister.
The reputation of British tourists abroad sunk further too when the public sex acts of young, inebriated holidaymakers in Magaluf shocked thelocal mayor into mounting a campaign to clean up the resort. Majorca’s government has just announced plans this week to turn Magaluf into a “mature resort” before next summer.
Thailand back on track?
Almost as difficult to envisage was the suggestion from Thailand’s ruling military that tourists should wear identity bracelets to make them safer. The move followed the shocking news that two British backpackers had been murdered while on holiday on the island of Koh Tao. It marked a difficult year for tourism in the “Land of Smiles”, with the country’s military taking power in a coup in May and imposing a nightly curfew on the nation, that was only gradually lifted.
One of our most shared stories this year also came from Thailand, where an Australian tourist was mauled by a tiger in a park. The incident led to much debate about whether it was truly sensible to allow a wild animal to be petted by tourists.
New openings
Other events that got travellers talking were the various new openings of 2014.
We had our first look at the Shangri-La hotel at the Shard; a guest lodge welcomed overnight visitors to the Downton Abbey estate; a vertigo-inducing walkway connected Swiss peaks; a visitor centre opened at Bannockburn; the Musee des Confluences revitalised Lyons’ docks areaand New York opened its 9/11 museum.
Established attractions, meanwhile, gave us extra reasons to visit: new lights at the Sistine Chapel meant that its delicate ceiling frescos were easier to see; Tower Bridge was given a new glass-floor walkway; we were told that lengthy restoration work on the sphinx was coming to an end and New York’s High Line park was finally complete with the opening of the Rail Yards section.
Heathrow’s Terminal 2 reopened after a four-year facelift and none of the upsets that befell Terminal 5’s opening. While in the skies, Boeing’s new, technologically advanced Dreamliner made headlines as early planes were grounded due to battery fires. The first Airbus A350XBs were delivered to Qatar Airways just last week, with the manufacturer dubbing it the most modern aircraft in service.
Plane problems
We were reminded that flying can not be without complication – there was the passenger who found a screw embedded in his window; theplane propeller that smashed into a passenger’s head; the Ryanair planes that clipped wings; the easyJet crew that hit the ceiling during a period of turbulence, the emergency slide that inflated in the middle of the cabin; the Vietnamese plane that landed at the wrong airport and theman who was trapped in the toilet for 15 hours.
Travellers could also have done without the computer glitch at Heathrow that led to the grounding of hundreds of flights earlier this month, and the closure of Blackpool and Manston airports.
It was enough to fill one with rage – which we saw a lot of in 2014. In fact, people got angry in ways we had never seen before, over everything from knee space to nuts and noodles.
Those legroom wars were thanks to the Knee Defender gadget, and travellers' lives were seemingly made easier in 2014 by a number of other inventions, such as pod seats on planes; the headband pillow; thesuitcase that turns into chair; and the suitcase that is also a scooter.
Reasons to be cheerful
But there was also much to turn the head of even the most jaded traveller in 2014, from new motorcycle tours of Cuba run by Che Guevara’s son; to Eurostar offering direct journeys to the south of France; the world’s largest cruise ships arriving in British seas; North Korea trying to tempt us with a marathon, a ski resort and a weird new website, and Iran becoming somewhere we all really wanted to visit.
The World Cup drew one million foreign visitors to Brazil, though Egyptand Kenya suffered tourism losses, while Wales received an unexpected endorsement from the most powerful man in the world. “Wales is a place of extraordinary beauty,” declared Barack Obama back in September.
And more people than ever before took part in Telegraph Travel’s annual readers’ survey, voting New Zealand their favourite destinationand Cape Town their favourite city.
The hero of 2014
Finally, the title of "hero of the year" has to go to the pilot who ordered pizzas for his delayed passengers for his outstanding display of humanity.
And the villains? The gang of troublesome Gibraltar monkeys who were sent to live in Scotland for scaring tourists. “It is like we are the police and we are picking them up, one by one," said Eric Shaw, the head of Gibraltar's monkey operation. He promised the hardy animals would adapt well to the colder climate. We hope he was right.
