The charming little airport that ruins thousands of holidays

Horror films occasionally use the device of the deceptive idyll. An apparently restful place — a clearing in the woods, a pretty cottage — is the site of a fiendish atrocity. A goodie escapes and breathlessly reports the matter to the police. Next morning the authorities race to the scene, and find nothing. Wickedness has been concealed. The deceptive idyll has returned.

Such a place is Chambéry airport in south-east France. Framed by mountains and fringed by Lake Bourget, it was founded in 1938 and has not grown much. On weekdays little disturbs the airfield daisies save the tinkle of distant cow bells and a cooling Savoyard breeze. You can imagine the Milka girl dating the guy with the ping-pong bats.

Yet on winter Saturdays, Chambéry’s mask drops. There is weeping, wailing and gnashing of middle-class British teeth. Arguments erupt. Profiteers fleece desperate families. Children shiver. Chambéry airport, you see, is one of the main terminals for British ski-tour operators in the French Alps. Some 250,000 passengers use it annually, nearly all on a handful of Saturdays in December, January and February. The place cannot cope.

Just before New Year you may have spotted TV news footage of anoraked British travellers stuck in a crowded airport. That was Chambéry. It was the first Saturday after Christmas, busiest in the ski-tour calendar. A long-forecast weather front arrived. You would have thought a commune such as Savoie, where ski tourism is so important, would be ready. Nope. Major roads became blocked by cars while gendarmes shrugged. At Chambéry airport, thousands of Brits arrived and found no coaches to take them away. When the coaches did arrive, unloading further hordes, the airport building overflowed. The crowd was as thick as at the end of a Twickenham international.