Travel broadens the mind, we were told at school, writes Michael Dwyer. Today's students would more usefully be advised that travel is a mindbender, that it gets more stressful all the time. Here is one salutary account of how a summer holiday began on August 2nd, 2002, the Friday of the bank holiday weekend.

Noon. The rain is bucketing down as the taxi ferries the two of us through the crawling traffic from Ranelagh to Dublin Airport. But we don't care. We are flying to Malaga, and driving on to the blazing sunshine of the charming town of Estepona down the less touristy side of the Costa del Sol, west of Marbella. We are looking forward to arriving at our spacious apartment with its manicured gardens, swimming pool and beach, and to dinner later that evening at one of the town's most entertaining restaurant, the flamboyantly designed establishment known as Robbies.

1 p.m. The airport appears to be carrying out an evacuation on a scale with the fall of Saigon as we join the queue at the Aer Lingus check-in desk. For the second time in a year I am unfortunate enough to be standing behind a passenger who has just been told her passport is out of date. There is a long delay as this Spanish woman stares at her passport, as if praying that it will update itself, before she finally accepts that she cannot travel through our European Union without frontiers.

1.20 p.m. Finally it's our turn to check in. There is a problem with pre-assigned seating for other passengers, we are told. Could we go the nearby standby desk in 25 minutes and we will be sorted out? Sure, even though we are really hungry by now, not having had time to eat breakfast that morning, and looking forward to a sandwich before the flight.

1.45 p.m. The bombshell is dropped at the standby desk. Aer Lingus has overbooked the flight. We learn later that we are two of nine passengers selected at random to be bumped. Overbooking is becoming increasingly common, and, as usual, September 11th is blamed.

Our attention is drawn to the overbooking clause on our tickets: "Whilst carriers make every effort to provide seats to which confirmed reservations exist, seat availability is not absolutely guaranteed."

Had we booked cheap seats on a charter we might not have been quite so surprised. But we certainly did not expect this to happen on a scheduled flight with our national carrier and on tickets costing €423.92 each.

And however strapped for cash Aer Lingus is, we did not imagine they were so desperate to achieve maximum capacity on every flight that some mandarin in the company would risk calculating that as many as nine people would fail to turn up for a flight to Malaga on the Friday of the busiest summer holiday weekend of the year.

This was hardly going to be a flight carrying many business passengers who were likely to cancel at the last minute, as on a flight to London when there's an alternative within an hour. This was a flight full of holidaymakers eager to escape to the sun from the misery of this Irish summer.

2 p.m. Gradually, the shock is beginning to set in. "This is this," as Robert De Niro intoned in The Deer Hunter. No way out, unless we would accepted being rerouted through another airport to arrive in Malaga "well past midnight" - far too late to collect our hired car or to collect the apartment keys from the live-out caretaker.

At least we are going for the week. The forlorn woman next to us at the standby desk tells us through gnashed teeth how she had taken that Friday off to make a longer weekend of it, and that she has to be back at work on the following Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, people who arrive at the airport much later than us are being checked in for the flight from which we were bumped.

2.15 p.m. The reality still hasn't quite sunk in and I demand to see a supervisor. One of the ground staff had already explained that Aer Lingus is far from what it used to be, that standards have fallen and that passengers are infuriated by the consequences of overbooking every day of the week.

2.30 p.m. Happily, Joyce Farren, the supervisor who comes to meet us, is a pleasant reminder of Aer Lingus in the good old days - an unfailingly courteous and helpful professional. What she cannot do is get us seats on EI 586 to Malaga. She arranges guaranteed seats on the lunchtime flight the next day and offers rooms and dinner at the Great Southern Hotel at the airport. It seems pointless to plough through the rain and the traffic back to Ranelagh, and Paul Jennings, the cat-sitter is already in situ there, so we accept. She also offers €150 each by way of compensation, or an Aer Lingus travel voucher worth €191 each, and we accept the latter.

3.10 p.m. Joyce personally leads us downstairs into the arrivals area and pages the hotel shuttle coach to take us and our luggage to our unexpected overnight accommodation.

4 p.m. It ain't over till it's over. It's time to get back in the lift and up to the room and make some calls - to Autos Lara in Malaga, which is bringing our transport to the airport, and to the apartment building caretaker, to tell them of our rearranged schedule. More problems. Autos Lara has left its phone number off its e-mail confirmation, and the apartment owner, who lives in Nassau, Germany, has omitted a digit from the caretaker's mobile number, so we have to make several 11818 calls.

5.05 p.m. Everything is finally sorted and I have a headache for the first time in over a year. I ponder the comfortable, practically designed hotel room with its views of the rainswept airport car parks, its trouser press which makes me laugh because it's such an Alan Partridge staple, and its TV movie menu - six mainstream feature films, all of which I've already seen, and six channels of "erotica" which I'm not interesting in seeing. I ponder if the Irish film censor's office now has to pass and classify soft porn for in-room hotel entertainment.

However, as I consider the reality that this is how each of us is wasting a day's annual leave from work, I am more exercised by dark thoughts concerning the faceless Aer Lingus bureaucrats who sit in their offices with the aid of slide rules or tea leaves or whatever assists them in assessing how many passengers are unlikely to show up for our national carrier's scheduled flights.

It would be very instructive for these great minds if, even once a week, they were forced to face the music and to sit at the check-in desk, passing on the bad news to those passengers they had chosen at random to bump because they had allowed the flight to be overbooked.

The board of Aer Lingus might usefully inquire into the cost of these decisions. A room in the Great Southern costs €190, unless they get a reduced rate for sending dozens of bumped passengers there every day, plus the set dinner at €32 (you pay for your own wine) and breakfast at €17, and the travel vouchers worth €191 each. That adds up to €860 for just us two bumped passengers, and excludes the charges for essential telephone calls, unused car hire and apartment rental for which they will be invoiced.

Does it make economic sense in the end? Does it make any sense? Or is it simply greed? Any reader who doesn't want to share our frustrating experience should wonder if their Aer Lingus ticket is worth the paper it is printed on, and should check in advance before going to the airport to ensure that they haven't been bumped by overbooking. I know I will in the future, every time I fly.

Postscript: Saturday, August 3rd.

6.05 p.m. Finally, 30 hours after originally arriving at check-in, we emerge from the baggage hall at Malaga Airport. The temperature is 34 degrees and the sun is blazing down. The attendant from Autos Lara is waiting with the air-conditioned Punto, and as we set off on the zippy 91km journey across the striking landscape of the Autopista del Mediterraneo towards Estepona, the ordeal is beginning to recede.

7.45 p.m. As we sip pre-dinner cocktails on our balcony in the warm, soothing evening sunshine, we spare a thought for those unfortunate travellers who, thanks to the thoughtlessness of their carrier, are looking out a Dublin Airport hotel window as the rain pours down on the car parks.

It could be you.