Passport control

For those of us who travel through Leeds Bradford late in the evening are beginning to become irked by the officious officers of HM Immigration service -

• They seem to enjoy looking you up and down as if you an immigrant from the 3rd World country- remember people are innocent until you prove them guilty.
• They ask stupid questions such "as where have you come from" - Read the arrivals Board people it's fairly clear we have come from either Dusseldorf, Amsterdam or Brussels
• They love swiping every passport through the machine and waiting for another glorious Government IT system to respond quickly (mmmh) to say you are acceptable - leads to queues of several hundred people off 4 planes.

Have to admit sometimes I become a fan of profiling to keep the queues moving.

flybe - keeping people waiting

Scraped out of a foggy leeds bradford at 0700 arrived in southampton an hour later. Looked up at the southampton departure board and the early Flybe flight to leeds due to leave at 0720 was now due to depart at 1100!
Going back through southampton airport to get to brussels tonight and sat next to gentleman who had been the airport departure lounge all day:

• he was due to go on the above early plane but Flybe camcelled it at 11am.
• he was re-booked on the lunchtime flight - but that was cancelled due to lack of crew.
• 12 hours later, he had been put on the 1750 plane to Leeds which was 1hour 10 minutes late when I boarded my plane for Brussels.

I hope he made it - I marvel sometimes at the patience of fellow travellers

Fog

On a Jet2.com from Dusseldorf to Leeds - Plane very full 142 passengers - totally uneventful flight until 3km from leeds, I realised it was very foggy. Big thump as the plane hit the runway, but landing was ok otherwise but very foggy. Whilst taxiing Captain comes overs the intercom - "Due to the visibility being 250m, a computer has just landed this aircraft, in afew years you wont need pilots!"
Passenger reaction was interesting over the next 5 mins: reaction ranged from "Never flying again, wouldn't have flown with these people if I knew they used computers" - to one great comment - "hope they weren't using Windows Vista !"

Absolutely Bizarre

Checking in tonight at London city airport @ VLM Check-in desk - I have just answered the security questions "Have you anything sharp in your Hand baggage etc.", as you do with my hold luggage disappearing down the belt - when up rushes a Gentleman, dressed in full Hassidic Jewish suit with accessories with a 3" blade fold knife in hand and I quote:
"They wouldn't let me take this through with hand luggage"
VLM Lady: "No sir - knives are not allowed"
"Can you reverse the belt and get my luggage back so I can put it in"
VLM Lady "No sir - I can't do that"
"But I don't want to lose it"
VLM Lady keeping calm – “I suggest Sir goes and buys a stamp and envelope from the Newsagent and post the knife to your home address.”
And off he rushed.
Bizarre !

It could only happen at a British Airport

On an early flight to Amsterdam from Humberside International Airport (only international because of the 3 flights a day to Schipol): Plane mainly full of Business people travelling across the world for Monday morning + a smattering of OAPs travelling to see loved ones in far flung corners of the world.
All Boarded ready to go, waiting for the Humberside De-icing machine to clear the ice - after 1 wing it breaks down leaving the operator stranded 30 ft in the air in a cherry-picker type basket! They can't seem to rescue him even with the fire brigade ladders! Engineer to fix the de-icer is an hour away and the sun wont warm up sufficiently for 2 hours - it's going to be a long wait.
People's connections bust, Business weeks and holidays ruined.....thank goodness I am only going to Amsterdam.........hopefully

How good is your Chinese?

Travelled Flybe back from Southampton. Surprisingly it was an ATR42 plane (flybe normally use DASH8s) with emergency exit signs in Chinese! When you looked at the safety card it was in German, & Chinese and finally English.
The plane actually involved did not belong to Flybe but an airline called Air Atlantique. When I looked them up on the internet depsite their French name they are actually based in Coventry. Still does not explain the chinese emergency exit signs......

Airplane lottery

Sitting in Antwerp airport to catch the early plane to London city, watching the ground crew preparing two aircraft: one is 0700 to London City & Manchester the other is 0700 to Nuremburg (standard passenger dress: walking boots and leiderhosen - I do not exagerate). From the body language of the groundcrew, I would say one plane is bust and the other ok (cue growing number of little white vans with flashing lights around an aircraft - man in cherry picker looking at wing - mystified men with torches and manuals)- but which flight will go.....anybody got a coin ?