After a long lull due to Covid, airline travel is coming back in Northern Ireland

The cheap fare carrier Ryanair has announced four new routes from Belfast from next summer.

The airline is returning to operations from Belfast International Airport.

The new routes to Budapest, Cardiff, Mallorca and Valencia will mean 16 Ryanair flights (see page 17).

It is approaching three years since lives and livelihoods were turned upside down around the world due to Covid, perhaps above all for the travel industry.

In not one country on earth has any of the worst predictions for deaths come even close to being met. Even so, many older and vulnerable people did die with coronavirus as part of their cause of death.

It will take years to assess whether lockdowns were an over reaction. But they have certainly been an unintended experiment into various aspects of modern life in rich countries such as Britain and Ireland.

It seemed for more than a year after the first lockdown in the Spring of 2020 that people would never return to their cars in the numbers that they had done pre pandemic. It does not seem like that now – traffic in and out of Belfast at peak times is almost as high as ever.

It also seemed like people might not take so many holidays overseas. One of the upsides of Covid was that people began to enjoy home much more, and flocked to local beaches and country parks, even in winter.

As recently as the spring of this year, the airline industry was still far behind where it once was in terms of passenger volumes. Now though airlines are struggling to recruit the staff to man their often full flights.

Travelling is one of the great joys of modern life. What was once only open to the few is now a pleasure for people around the world. With airplanes and road vehicles getting ever more fuel efficient, it need not be an environmentally damaging habit.