This blog is being written from the departure lounge at London Stansted Airport where my easyJet flight to Munich has been delayed by two hours – our 08:05 is now not expected to leave before 10:00. Why am I flying EZ instead of BA or LH out of Heathrow? Simple - it was cheap. The legacy carriers wanted £300-400 for a day trip return ticket booked close in date….EasyJet only charged £180. I am regretting my decision.

The delay has just about destroyed my day filming trip in Munich. There is no-one from EasyJet on the airside of check-in to help with re-booking of flights, questions about cancellations, or indeed any question from EasyJet. You just get referred to a telephone.

If I want to call them up to discuss my options it’s a premium priced call at £1 ($2 per minute). Or I have to log in to the internet and pay another £10 for the wi-fi privilege.

This early morning departure from London to Munich is probably the closest this airline comes to a business flight. Looking around me, most of the passengers are suited and going on business and feeling as disgruntled as myself. If EasyJet wishes to cultivate the business passenger it is going to have to do more in terms of its airport service than this!

We know that some low cost carriers are a truly horrible experience, and I won’t subject myself or my staff to their rudeness, but EasyJet has never been in this category.

Since low cost carriers are now the dominant force in European aviation and an increasing part of business travel, they should recognise that those of us taking off on business need better support, help and advice when things go wrong. The low-cost airline that gets this truly right will beat the cheapest option every single time!

Last week I was in Copenhagen at the tenth anniversary celebration of Star Alliance.

I remember when Star was announced in 1997, with the five original member planes parked in a star format at Frankfurt Airport (just in case you have forgotten, the original five were Lufthansa, United, Thai, Air Canada and SAS).

One of the first reasons for Star was to allow airlines to co-operate and offer seamless operations without having to go through cumbersome takeovers and mergers which back then seemed impossible because of treaties affecting nationality which could cause carriers to lose routes.

When I was asked to take part in Copenhagen, I did so readily. I wanted to meet the two men who were the driving force behind Star; Jan Stenberg was the Chief Executive of SAS and Jurgen Weber was head of Lufthansa at the time of the birth of star. I wanted to know whether the chiefs had any idea of what they were starting. For instance would oneworld and SkyTeam would ever have come about if Star Alliance hadn’t started the trend?

Jurgen’s view is that the other alliances would probably not have got together with the speed that they did after Star formed. It was an unseemly rush to build alliances before any decent airline was left outside. In the end this is a moot point; Star did form and the others followed.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Jan of SAS still believes that the alliances are still relevant even though airlines like KLM/Air France and Lufthansa/Swiss have found clever ways to merge without losing their routes. They point out there are still large parts of the world not covered by open skies agreements.

All of which brings me to whether as a business traveler I think the alliances are such a good thing. Today 47 airlines are full members of one alliance or another (17 for Star Alliance, 10 for oneworld and 10 for Skyteam).

Last weekend Quest to Build was broadcast. In it we looked at the world of the celebrity architect and their role in the designing the world about us.

Because of this show I have become hypersensitive to design and buildings around us (this always happens when I make a particular show – you immerse yourself in the subject and bingo, it suddenly becomes all consuming).

With this in mind, I was flying through Zurich (connecting to Swiss flight 015 to New York), when I visited the Swiss lounge at Zurich. I wondered “what was the architect thinking?”

Look at the picture. After you pass the front desk you are immediately confronted with a flight of steep stairs to get into the lounge.

Surely the designers must have known just about everyone entering here would have bags of one size or another? Wouldn’t you want to make access as easy as possible not akin to negotiating an obstacle course? (Yes there is a slow elevator, but most people groan at the wait, and then groan as they lug bags up the stairs).

The architect must have had a reason for putting so many steps in such a silly place of travel, but it’s not immediately clear to me.

Unless of course the answer is simpler: The architect didn’t travel very much so didn’t realize how heavy hand baggage is, or Swiss didn’t think about it.

Either is possible and both probably likely.

p.s. Since I am on about Zurich airport never say the Swiss don’t have a sense of humour. Take the subway train between terminal one and two and look closely out of the window. Pictures flash past the window. I have hardly travelled Swiss in the past five years, yet I have travelled with them several times across the Atlantic so far this year.

The reason is mainly cost, they seem to be very active in discounting in the wholesale market for their connecting flights through Zurich, plus being a Star Alliance carrier they are high on my list. I am not making any point here, just how its funny things go in phases.