Flying is about class and money. There’s the upper class, who fly first and business (and get their kit off after the champagne, if you were lucky enough to be flying BA recently). And the lower class, who fly economy (and get blind drunk, if you’re unlucky enough to fly Monarch from Tenerife).

Then there’s the new nomad class, who live on airplanes and in airport transit lounges, tapping away at their laptops and switching their mobiles from 1,800 to 1,900kWh. The nomad class moves between business meetings, conferences and intercontinental time zones. Monday it’s Davos, Switzerland; Tuesday it’s How The Web Can Save The Whales in Seattle; and Wednesday it’s a Change Management project in Sydney. Or clinching a mega-merger at the JFK Hilton, if you’re an I-Bank type.

Henry Mintzberg is of this class. He’s a business professor at McGill in Montreal and at INSEAD near Paris (although, mysteriously, ‘he splits his time between Montreal and Prague’).

The nomad class checks in at Davos and pontificates about poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. What they actually know about is which airline serves the best Chablis, what exactly is the maximum two-carry-on-bags weight allowance in Swissair business class, and how long it takes to get from Gate 12 to Gate 37 at O’Hare.

The nomad class lifestyle generates envy in the proletariat. All this jetting off to exotic places, getting your jacket hung up by a simpering steward, waking up next to Catherine Zeta-Jones in her pyjamas as you start the descent into Heathrow.

But as all members of the nomad class will tell you, after the fourth Martini in the Changi Airport Super VIP Exec. Holding Pattern Bar: We all hate flying.

Mintzberg has written a pretty entertaining book on why we hate flying. I liked the section on ‘Designing the perfect airport’, which included some pertinent advice: ‘Never underestimate the terrorizing effect on passengers of having someone who cannot see ahead pushing a half-kilometre snake of carts through a crowded airport.’ And I liked the section on the most pretentious wine list competition, which ‘Air Gaul’ (Air France) wins hands down.

So you could do a lot worse than buy this book when you’re rushing to catch your next Air Nomad flight to that conference in Shanghai on ‘Environmentally Friendly Development: Less Pollution, Less Business Travel’. Make sure you get the Air Miles.

Andrew Wileman is a strategy and organisation consultant, and a frequent flyer