Why does British Airways hate us? What have we done to deserve its latest punishment, a fine of £240 if we prefer to carry our clobber in two small bags instead of one hulking case? Has BA not forgiven us for scuttling into the arms of rival airlines when its cabin crew planned a strike this half-term? If so, being beastly is not going to win us back.

After charities for the elderly and disabled complained that frailer folk might struggle with a 50lb load, BA — too late — softened its tone. “Where it is clear that a passenger cannot manage one bag,” it declared, “we will let them check in an additional bag (or more) provided the total weight is within the 23kg limit.”

So what criteria will BA use to deduce whether a customer is feeble enough to double-bag? Perhaps check-in staff could use one of those body-stat machines that, by the application of electrodes, works out a person’s muscle density. Or will there be a simple age cut-off, so a burly pensioner escapes the £240 fee, while a Kylie-a-like or a mother wrangling a toddler must stump up? Among the inflatable pillows and multi-region plug adaptors at the airport shops, will surgical appliances be sold so that customers can quickly feign a sprain?

If only there was logic behind this ruling. BA is also dropping its baggage allowance from 32kg, which is fair enough: fuel savings, smaller carbon footprint, ensuring that women finally take heed of that perennial magazine feature on the capsule wardrobe.

But the one-bag thing is hard to fathom: surely it cannot cost an extra £120 each way in holding space or to pay a baggage handler to sling another suitcase onto a truck? Since BA will still allow you to carry a set of golf clubs free, is there anything to stop me stuffing my clothes in an empty golf bag? Or could I book another seat for my second case — with the bonus of eliminating tiresome in-flight conversation — since in many instances this will be cheaper than the bag fine.

But the new rule seems merely punitive, a short, sharp shock for the unwary flyer. Particularly as BA told sales staff not to tell passengers about the new rule, which comes into force on Tuesday, unless they ask. Wow, there will be some queue-blocking barneys when the nice BA lady chirps out the company line — “You should have read our website” — and fleeces a passenger of his holiday spending money.

British Airways has not understood its place in the travel market and the nation’s heart. We book with BA because we believe it doesn’t hate us. We know the economy airlines loathe our cheapskate guts. We trade their contempt for a bargain seat.

We are used to the gritted-teeth experience of easyJet and Ryanair. Want a meal? Well, you should have bought a bap at Benji’s. Fancy sitting beside your beloved on your romantic mini-break: prepare to sprint across the tarmac, elbowing away oldsters to bagsy a pair of seats. Or pay easyJet’s charge to let you jump the queue: our national character subverted for a fiver. Next up, a surcharge for a lifejacket and for your oxygen mask to drop down first.

We expect the cheapo carriers to diddle us. When Ryanair lost my suitcase, causing me to fork out £100 in clothes, contact lenses and toiletries, I had only a fortnight to claim compensation. Two weeks from my outward flight, that is. So by the time I got home and sent off the form, it was too late. A week of rinsing out the same pair of pants every night for nothing.

We even suspect that their tight margins imperil our lives. This week we heard that Ryanair planes make many dangerously fast landing approaches to meet their ultra-tight, 25-minute turnarounds. The airline, of course, reacted not by allowing more time — instead it fined the pilots. But we expect more of British Airways. As our national carrier, even a flogged-off husk, it has a little cachet left. I feel, unaccountably, safer on its planes. My brain knows it cares more for its shareholders than its passengers, yet my heart carries a flame, a feeling that amid the vicissitudes of foreign airports, BA is my ally.

Yet now Willie Walsh, the BA chief executive, thinks the way to recoup the £80 million lost in the strike threat is to act like a budget airline. Shrink meals to snacks, bring in arbitrary charges (and I don’t think BA has the hang of this bag-charging thing: Ryanair charges £7 per case, not £120), everything except cut fares.

Air travel today is trying beyond measure. Flying to New York last summer, the day after the liquid bomb scare, having shuffled for five hours between body searches, gagging for water, watching fellow passengers being made to chuck away brand new books bought in duty free because they were banned on board, feeling like I was heading for Guantanamo, not my family holiday, I pondered for the first time: is flying worth this hassle? Next year maybe Scotland or a drive across France . . . If BA wants our business back, it had better be nice.

— In my part of South London three murders in four days — even though one was a 15-year-old boy asleep in his bed — was strangely unshocking.

We still remember the young man slain with a machinegun in a nightclub on Hallowe’en, two boys “popped” in McDonald’s after school, a woman shot dead holding her baby niece at a christening. On our way to the cinema last weekend, my husband spied a particularly exciting yellow and blue crime sign: police were asking for information about a live hand-grenade. Things are escalating, it seems.

But where was the Mayor of London this week? In Peckham talking to community leaders, pledging action, comforting families? It takes more than three murdered young black men, it seems, to get Ken Livingstone to cross the river.

Local schools have been shut for fear of drive-by shootings, police admit gun crime is out of control, children of 10 are found with weapons, parents dread allowing their teenagers out: Peckham is declared Britain’s Bronx.

And New York Mayor Giuliani would know what to do: he’d walk tall, express outrage, show his city is not heedless and blind. For what is most lacking from the lives of these feckless, fatherless, gun-toting boys is strong and compassionate leadership.

Where are you Ken?

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