Nowadays, when booking flights, customers are usually asked to provide both their mobile telephone number and email address so that the airline can then advise of any delays or other problems affecting the flight. It’s a good idea and is one less problem for the customer to worry about when preparing to travel.

I experienced this first hand a few days back when I received both a text and an email from the airline advising me that my 14.55 departure had been put back to 15.40. Very useful, apart from the fact that the morons sent their messages out at 17.23 by which time I had been in the air for nearly one and a half hours and was virtually half way to my destination!