
The first casualty of war is truth, but travel is never far behind. And this week, European officials have been talking about travel in soundbites of questionable veracity. Both the boss of the International Energy Agency and the EU energy commissioner have made pronouncements of imminent aviation fuel shortages that are not borne out by my study of the available data.
Careless talk costs holidays. “Every other question is about fuel,” one leading independent travel agent tells me. I can be quite certain that, two months ago, the number of customers wondering about whether their holiday flight would take off due to a lack of fuel was zero.