In a week where Britain’s major airports have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, I’ve had an epiphany about flying with the family. On our return flight from Malaga on Saturday 9 June, we waited impatiently on the runway at Gatwick – for a long, long 20 minutes - for a “stand” to become free. Once our British Airways plane had docked, there was a further delay of 20 minutes while the airport authorities attempted to find a qualified person to open the plane door. The frustrated captain kept us informed with details of “locator devices” while our three children began punching each other from boredom, but until straitjackets become mandatory with lifejackets, we were stuck at the back of the plane in squealing-kid purgatory.

The scrum that followed when the doors finally opened made the queues at Disney seem civilised. A big plane means a big wait, and we were jostled by sharp hand luggage as 150 passengers gasping for fresh air trampled our six-year-olds in the rush. What a contrast Gatwick made to the relaxed trip out to Malaga from Southampton Airport on Flybe, a small plane with only four seats abreast that had the advantage of steps up to the back of the plane. We skipped down the back steps in a matter of minutes, happy to put our feet on terra firma and experience the wave of heat that announces your arrival in Spain. Old-fashioned the back steps and bus may be, but for whose sake where those bloody stands made for anyway?

As the queue for passport control in Gatwick quickly resembled a Glastonbury crowd, we reminded ourselves how painless the security at Southampton had been. Once again, that cheerfulness which staff show when they are not under tremendous stress, with a chuck behind the ear for the kids, and a “have a nice holiday” kept us all sweet.

This has been a hell of a week for British Airport Authorities, and families thinking ahead to the summer holidays should pay heed to the predicted chaos. On Saturday 9 June, a news items warned of “gridlock” in the main airports because the government’s anti-terror security regime can’t cope with high passenger numbers due to staff shortages. The Daily Mail reported: “travellers already face delays of 40 minutes and the process is set to grind to a halt when the school holidays begin.”

In March, BAA Chief Executive Stephen Nelson said he wanted to reduce queueing at airports to five minutes or less for 95% of the time. Hmm. At a media dinner in London he was reported as saying, “we will not be able to guarantee it – not at Easter, not even in the Summer.” Or ever?

If Mr Nelson was forced to take our three children through Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted, then he might feel the need for added urgency in his recruitment of 1,400 new security staff. Children don’t do queues unless you drug them, and being stuck in a check-in queue snaking outside the door of the airport, barricaded between trolleys, always results in tears – usually from the parents.

Last August, after the terror alert at Heathrow, John Prescott came under criticism from the press for only visiting his local Humberside airport and Robin Hood airport in Doncaster. Both Humberside and Robin Hood handle less than 20,000 passengers each in one month in contrast to the 200,000 passengers passing daily through Heathrow. For once, I disagreed with the press pack and Conservative MP David Davies (whose view was that the sight of Prescott would add “more misery and trepidation” to delayed passengers at Heathrow). John Prescott was an unlikely champion of the regional airport. Most families plough the popular routes, so why don’t more of them make the drive to the airport longer for a shorter queue?

It can’t be a matter of price, when the hassle of arriving at Gatwick or Heathrow is inflated by expensive cab fares or exorbitant parking fees. The cost of sticking the car in the long-term car park at Southampton was £8.70 a day, at £60.90 for the week it works out less than our return taxi fare to Gatwick from South West London. Nor are the regionals uncompetitive with flight prices anymore: Flybe from Southampton came out at £146 round trip per person for the week after half term, with BA return to Malaga at £160.

I accept people might have fears over security, especially after last week’s ITV1’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme, showing security staff at Birmingham reading magazines, doing puzzles and snoring their way through luggage examination for passengers destined for the US. Similarly, in surely a record week for BAA embarrassments, 22 baggage staff were arrested at Stansted airport on 4 June for raiding bags for i-pods and jewellery (they took “pot luck” with the luggage for the spoils).

My view is that the reason too many parents unnecessarily book at the major airports is because, like lambs to the slaughter, they are so focussed on the number of cots in the hotel that they forget about the hell awaiting them at their point of exit. Parents unwittingly forsake the calm, unhurried atmosphere of, say, Southampton airport, whose check-in area is probably the size of Costa coffee at Gatwick, for the low-ceilinged abbatoir conditions of Heathrow.

This relaxed atmosphere should be the holy grail for all families. When professional footballer Sol Campbell was at the centre of a near-disaster story at Southampton Airport in January this year (his plane overran the runway and ended up on the grass verge), it was not the celebrity aspect that attracted me to the story, but the comment made by a passenger on board. Steve Miller, 63, from Havant told the local newspaper, the Southern Daily Echo: “It was all really calm. Nobody realised how serious it was until we saw how lucky we were”. Calm. Now there’s a word I haven’t heard used in an airport context for a long time.

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