OTT

Flew back into Humberside aiport tonight from Schipol om KLM (Keep (your) Luggage Missing) - 80 people on a Fokker 70. 4 passport officers + 3 police complete with 2 Heckler Koch machine guns + 3 revolvers. Mmmmh what a waste of resources "to keep" the country safe. Quicker we think through a way of profiling and assess where the risks to travellers really lie, the money will hopefully get spent in the right place.

Flights early this week

A couple of flights early in the week:
Leeds - southampton
Southampton - Brussels
The queues are down, maybe less people travelling (?) - but the greatest bugbear seems to be causing BPR (boarding passenger rage) is incosistency between security checks. People get really steamedup if they lose things, but allegedly find someelse has got their item through.
One irate lady at southampton - large gucci bag has lost all her make-up at Manchester that morning, but Southampton in evening was the final straw - because they took her final article of make-up -a face powder pad, which Manchester had let through.

Gatwick last week.

travell to Marseilles and back last wednesday/thursday - interesting experience being 1st time on easy jet and under version 5 of the new security regs. Queued 2.5 hours at easyjet, although i had only handluggage (very small bag) and no liquids. Then passed through main security a breeze really (10 minutes tops) except the slowest part of the queue was getting through teh pre-checkers , who were taking chewing gum off you!
Coming back through Marseilles, plane was 1 hour late arriving, it then took an hour to board because the Marseilles airport authorities had decided on a final extra search of handluggage. My boss lost both his toothpaste ( he had bought airside at Gatwick + the tolietries he nicked from the Hotel we were staying in. The extra security check meant we missed the slot much to chagrin of the captain. arrived back at gatwick 2.5 hours late.

Bit of a Break from travelling - then hell.

Started back travelling week before last:
Jet2.com Leeds to Dusseldorf - interesting service given you have to queue so long with all the holiday makers going to Palma, Malaga etc. Plane 737 full to bursting so they must be doing something right ! BA Connect stand no chance having steadily reduced the size of the planes and kept their fares high.
Black Thursday: I arrived into Heathrow at 0724, 6 minutes before they shut the airport. Knew there was something wrong as we landed as there were to park. ATC told our plane to stop. Pilots allowed us to switch on phones and I was showing the pilots waht was going on from the internet via my phone, given atc was silent ! Finally parked up after 2 hours.