Once upon a time, in a world far far away, travelling by air was actually enjoyable. Airlines had personalised service, legroom was bountiful and they couldn't give away enough food and drink during your flight! How things in the airline industry have changed.

For most people travelling by air now involves more stress than a bad week at the office: additional charges for baggage and checkin, fuel surcharges, rigourous security checks, queues - and that's before you even get onboard! At least the airlines treat their paying customers well, I hear you questionably say. Wrong. If you are unfortunate enough to book with one of these airlines then you're troubles, my good friend, may have only just begun!

So here, in all their glory, are ten airlines plagued by a litany of overbooking, delays, cancellations and failed safety inspections.

In what one could term as a bit of oddity, a hole has emerged in the middle of the primary runway at Edinburgh Airport. This caused the runway to be closed for close for three hours yesterday.

As the officials say, the hole is a resultant of bad weather during resurfacing work. New surface gets laid on the runway post midnight and unfriendly weather has eroded certain parts of the runway which was discovered at around 1500 BST.

Eleven inbound flights were diverted to other airports. Plenty of arrivals and departures were postponed by a few hours.

A secondary runway was used momentarily to land some planes but foggy conditions deterred further arriving flights.

History will be created with the advent of the world’s largest airline, a merger making it a possibility. Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines are expected to merge under the flag of Delta. The estimated price of the deal is around 3.1 billion US dollars. Delta CEO Richard H Anderson will head the world biggest airline.

It is widely speculated that the deal was brought about to fight the intense competition in Europe and the steep recession being faced worldwide. The merger also helps the airline to tackle rising fuel costs and reduce operational costs.

Another merger is expected in the US, it is widely speculated. United Airlines and Continental Airlines could come together to counter similar hindrances to that of Delta-Northwest combine.

With the reduction of players in the airline market, the customer could be eventually hit. With less competition, prices tend to be on a higher scale and killing competition will give way to semi-monopoly. Maybe this is just the beginning and the path of the future.

Thousands and thousands of baggage went missing or delayed since the beginning of T5 and British Airways sent it to Milan to be sorted out and united with its owner. Onboard Express, the company responsible for sorting baggage has stated that around 5000 pieces of luggage have not found any claimers and BA might set them on fire if unclaimed in the next few days.

The Milan based company is sending the unclaimed luggage back to BA’s London warehouse where the airliner would eventually incinerate them.

Giovanni Tinelli, chief of OE said - "All our BA bags that are untraceable are sent back to BA and then they are destroyed in an incinerator."

A spokesman of BA has contradicted the claims of incinerating baggage; instead he has stated that the bags would be put out for auction if the owner doesn’t claim his/her luggage in the next six months.

I just don’t seem to understand the mindset of a traveller who wouldn’t claim his baggage. Maybe he has a bad memory or doesn’t care about his luggage too much. Either way, it amazes me.

Speculations are rife that travellers would move away from airlines as the wait times are getting astonishingly large due to security and other logistical reasons. Coventry airport is set to negate the effect by offering the best (shortest) wait times.

According to an online poll conducted by Travel Counsellors, passengers have highly rated the airport for its wait times.

According to the poll, on an average, the security checks are completed within 2 minutes; and upon arrival, there is no waiting need for immigration checks.

Any poll would reflect the best and worst of the item under scrutiny. While Coventry won accolades for short wait times, Manchester Airport was found staring at the other end of the line. It was voted as the airport with the longest wait times.

On an average, Manchester Airport ate 23 minutes for security checks and further 44 minutes for passport clearance.