Hooray, it's the end of cheap flights. All those horrible plastic seats, the 3am starts, the hidden luggage costs, the fat, slobby people going on the wrong kind of holiday to Spain and Poland, embarrassing Britain abroad. They pile off the aircraft in their Crocs and smear themselves over the local culture, they spew over the pavements of Cracow and relieve themselves over Rotterdam.

No one seems to feel sorry for the budget airlines as they announce their losses. They're outdated and anachronistic in these environmentally sensitive times.

David Cameron now prefers frolicking in the waves in Cornwall, Gordon Brown has rolled up his trousers to test the water at Walberswick in Suffolk.

Tony Blair might have gone on easyJet but that was in the 1990s, now no-frills flights are blamed for everything from the rise in skin cancer to the disappearance of polar bears and for Britain's terrible reputation abroad.

We are no longer known for having produced Sir Francis Drake and Freya Stark but for our inability to cope with large quantities of sun, sangria and sand.

Not long ago the Bishop of London called budget flights a “selfish choice” and politicians have demanded that airlines pay more tax. Now the surge in oil prices will put some out of business.

Well, that's fine for those who can afford to fly with traditional carriers, and only use budget airlines to go to their gîte at the weekend, but it will price many families out of the flying game.

A good thing too, the environmentalists say. But why do they always go for mass tourism and never the businessmen or the rich? If you are flying on an exclusive holiday to the Galapagos Islands, no one seems to mind, especially if you invest in that middle-class cop-out, the environmental offset.

If, as a hedge fund manager, you need to visit Geneva, Hong Kong and New York you are doing your part for the economy. But if you are a family who wants a fortnight's break once a year in the Mediterranean you are vilified.

Yet there is nothing outrageous about cheap flights. One of the great achievements of the 20th century was holidays for everyone. When Thomas Cook started organising seaside trips in the 1870s, politicians and vicars were horrified at the thought of workers enjoying themselves too much. The Rev Francis Kilvert noted: “Of all noxious animals, the most noxious is a tourist”.

But it's just snobbery. Last summer I found myself being lectured by a Goldman Sachs banker in Ibiza for having flown to the island from Bristol airport using easyJet when he had flown by private jet.

The smart airlines are the real culprits. They are the ones making air flights a misery and causing more environmental damage.

British Airways is dismal. In the past five years I have been bumped off so many of their flights because of strikes and terrorist threats that I now have 250,000 Air Miles in compensation. BA does not encourage economy-class passengers. They charge them more than the budget airlines for extra luggage and our four children usually end up sitting in four different rows.

In these credit crunch times, I don't want to worry that I am wasting money on food I don't eat. Since I have vowed never to go through Heathrow airport again after they lost my luggage twice in a row, I have found myself relying on cheap airlines flying out of regional airports and I've started enjoying flying again.

You shouldn't be flying at all, the environmentalists say. Well, most of the people who use budget airlines fly less frequently than the eco-warriors attending their conferences in Bali and Borneo.

They fly on an average of one family holiday a year and tourist flights account for less than 2 per cent of greenhouse gas emission in Britain.

In many ways cheap flights are more eco-friendly. They cram more people on to the flight (the average number of occupied seats for low fares airlines is 80 per cent compared with 70 per cent for traditional airlines) and they are at the forefront of finding lighter, more fuel-efficient planes.

And where are families expected to go if they can never fly abroad? This summer there are thousands of Boden-striped children running across the beaches of Cornwall and Suffolk but British holidays are expensive. It is hard to rent a holiday cottage for less than £700 a week. Dubrovnik is cheaper than Dorset.

Budget airlines, like some of their passengers, can be rude and crude, but by providing an effective service at an affordable price, they have done more to break down the artificial barriers of Britain's class system than any number of educational reorganisations.

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