gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
Tourism and visiting far away relatives don't fall under a category of "essential" travel.
neither does much business travel.....
I spent about a dozen years of my working life, flying - 40, 50 and sometimes 60+ flights per year. Always east, many many long haul to HKG, India, Africa, Pakistan, China, etc etc (pretty much everywhere east of the uk past Jordan to Japan) and like.... business class was always a necessity on anything longer than about 7 or 8 hours. I could get to Delhi J class. I once p!ssed off my then boss as we were boarding a BA flight to Delhi, when my boarding J class boarding pass was exchanged for an F class. He went mental, embarrassingly shouting etc... that he was my boss and should get the upgrade. As it happened I got it as a crew member recognised my frequent flyer status - and bumped me. I think it was my 6th visit to India that year.
Anyway after about a dozen years, and being asked to hot foot it to Delhi from Lagos!! I decided enough was enough. The straw that broke me - was on a return from a 3 month trip, was my darling wife booking a 5* J class trip to HKG, Singapore and Bali.....when all i wanted was a camping trip to Scotland.
I gave up flying for work (re-oriented my career), returned to tolerating long haul flying for holidays - luckily my airmiles could be spent on J class tickets....but in the end, i learned to hate flying and aeroplanes...I could tolerate a flight to Europe these days - we go to Spain or Portugal..... But if i can help it airports are a thing of the past for me.
I feel very privileged to have visited so many places (many very unusual destinations) and managed to take time off in many of those locations.