It was a red-letter day for Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum. His Airbus A380 was rolled out of its hangar in Hamburg, like some bloated, basted turkey taken from an oven, and Sheikh Ahmed liked it so much that he ordered another 60. And why not? He comes from the United Arab Emirates. The man has the cash. The A380 is not only the world's largest passenger plane, it is also billed as the most luxurious. I like the sound of that. Over the past fortnight I have flown ten times - a Turkish airline, a Ukrainian carrier, easyJet - and cannot escape the feeling that I have been moving around Europe in a slum tenement. The gasping drunks, the body odour, the arguments, a slapped child, the shuffling queue for the blocked lavatory, the queue for the queue. So if someone wants to use my petrol money to revolutionise air travel - actually to counter-revolutionise it, to turn the wheel back - then that's just fine by me. After the last big oil crisis, the billionaires from the Gulf bought shares in car companies, snapped up polo teams, hotels, clinics and lots and lots of Bond Street jewellery. Then the Russian oil magnates came along and bought football teams, houses big enough to accommodate a tank brigade and expressionist art.

Now the trend, it seems, is to change the way the punters use your oil. There is Alexander Lebedev, for example - KGB man made good, not many of those around - who is keen to buy the Öger Tours travel company. Öger used to specialise in taking Turkish guest-workers home on leave, then it scooped up Germans heading for the Caribbean. Lebedev reckons that he can't go wrong with an airline that caters to the big travellers in Europe, the Germans and the Russians. There is Russian interest too in TUI, the travel group that owns Hapag-Lloyd and the Robinson Club hotels. The scramble is on among Middle Eastern and Russian investors to shape the way we travel. They're probably afraid that we will become a stay-at-home culture, allotment gardeners rather than frequent flyers.

But it is Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum who will get my vote if I ever become a United Arab Emirates citizen, and if the UAE ever becomes a democracy. His idea of luxury is admittedly a little restricted - his proud boast is that showers have been installed in First Class. Showers! Rationed to five minutes a go. The principle is fine though: air travel should again be the preserve of the wealthy. We should dress up before taking to the air, just as we did in the 1950s.

As an unaccompanied minor travelling back from school, I would polish my shoes and put tight elastic garters on my socks so that they didn't tumble down, Just William-style; it was blazers and Brylcreem on British European Airways. All around me would be men in suits, crisp white shirts and women in fur. I distinctly remember being served apple crumble and custard. Those were the days when stewardesses had time to flirt and mollycoddle rather than just stomp down the aisles like flat-footed gendarmes.

Then came the proletarianisation of the skies. I don't want to be snobbish about the bargain airlines; we have all benefited a little from cheap fares. Mainly though we fell in love with an idea - that one could slip away to Prague for the weekend for the price of a trip to a Leicester Square cinema. That idea has soured. The sheer filth of airports, the Stalinist impounding of liquids, the hanging around, the crick-necked monitoring of the departures board, the stampede for the distant gate that leaves behind the old, the lame and the short-sighted. The dream of bargain basement travel - that you can live in a pleasant city, work in another and find happiness in both - is fool's gold.

Even the supposedly redeeming cultural benefits, occasionally paraded by Michael O'Leary, the opening up of a hidden Europe, is just tosh. Yes, more Britons than ever before have got to know the elegant porticos of Cracow and Riga; sadly, their memories have been blotted out by booze. Central Europeans who once quaintly thought of the English as a pale diffident race are now mobilising to stop the onslaught of naked stag party revellers with shoe-polished genitals invading their ancient market squares. As it is, the economics of oil and the dull throb of anxiety about carbon emissions is likely to force these carriers to rethink their business strategies.

For now, what we are left with is the hope that air travel can again become more genteel. We should travel less, but better. Fares have to go up but at the same time the treatment of passengers has to regain some of its humanity. That doesn't just mean hot towels, metal forks and two inches of extra leg space. It means a change of pace. Travel should become special again, not dead time between destinations. People should be encouraged to save their cash for a flight. Perhaps they could again read in advance about their future destination, as they used to in the 1950s.

And when they come to fly, perhaps the airports could be smaller, more intimate, rather than the First Circle of Hell. It is probably too late for the magic of flight to be reintroduced to air society, but the process of lifting off into the skies surely has more significance than buying a microwaved pizza from a grumpy waitress. Can't we all slow down a bit? And marvel?

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone