AN ARTICLE in the current edition of Business Traveller magazine offers "101 tips to make travelling easier". You'll be familiar with most of them, as they owe much to common sense. But tip 62 was a more unusual suggestion, and one that I hadn't read before:

Sometimes your ears won't pop—if it is prolonged and causing real pain, an old trick for treating it is "hot cups". Ask the crew for a plastic cup for each ear and two cloths dampened with boiling water to put in them. Then hold them over your ears for a couple of minutes. The heat generated will create a small vacuum that should unblock your ears and ease any pain.

I now realise that this is a well-established way to ease in-flight ear ache, which is usually caused by a closure of the Eustachian tubes preventing the air pressure in the middle ear equalising with the air outside. The Daily Mailrecommended the technique a couple of months ago, and indeed it does sound very effective. I suspect it would work particularly well with infants who can't understand instructions.

Those who can't quite face wearing plastic cups on their ears in front of a plane full of strangers have various other options. Swallowing or yawning can help open the Eustachian tubes. If that doesn't work, you could use the Valsalva manoeuvre, where you block your nose with your fingers, close your mouth and "blow" gently, though some doctors advise against this. The technique can harm your ear drums if you have an infection. But I'm sure you knew that.