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 ?

This is standard fare in Belgian Politics

For those who work and travel in Belgium, this story is not quirky but standard Belgium Forbids 18 and 88 | The Brussels Journal

Disaster at Marseilles airport again !

Air France & Marseilles airport strike again – tricky flights to make happen Marseilles Lyon followed by Lyon Dusseldorf with an hour to change. Boarding the Lyon flight called to the gate on time then disaster:
17:30: boarded to Bus
17:40: Bus arrives at Plane – ground agent seeks permission to Board us no response from stewardess.
17:50: ground agent announces problem with aircraft steps – should be fixable unquote !
17:55: hassled engineer appears from plane – new announcement from plane it’s not the steps it’s an electrical fault in cockpit. Bus returns to terminal.
18:05 more info at 18:15 whether they can fix.
18:15 an honest ground agent – no info next update at 18:30 but he is pessimistic. Everyone leaps forward because they all have tight connections at Lyon.
18:20 Manage to get early in queue – connection to dusseldorf blown, no other way there tonight via Paris etc. Bail will have to try and reclaim 50% of large sum of money via internet sales.
18:22: Plan B – no other options via Frankfurt or Munich with Lufthansa so it’s Ryan air to Eindhoven from terminal 2.
18:30 find my way to terminal 2 – used to be the old freight sheds @ Marseilles airport now with it’s a minimalist conversion to a terminal “MP2”. Wow that man Ryan is clever – a bit of internal steel girdering, lots of chipboard and corrugated thick plastic and you have a terminal.
18:32: arrive at Ryan air ticket desk to buy 1930 flight ticket to Eindhoven. Don’t take amex or maestro, so it’s cash.
1837: no cashpoint that works in MP2 so back to terminal 1.
1845: back to ticket desk – a ticket is fine but no change for my cash. Argument then follows if my ticket is 194.40€ the how much change from 200€? 3 ticket sellers cannot work it out and don’t have the change.
18:50: still arguing about change.
18;54: finally check in
1900: thru security to join the “cattle herding” for boarding.
1910: officially boarded but no plane yet – in cattle queue No 2
19:12 Plane arrives it’s a Ryan air legendary turnaround.
1925: Boarding – otherwise known as a “sprint for seat”. Manage elbow my way to get an emergency exit seat (without paying more) so better legroom. Interesting use for Sick bags – double as postal envelopes for film developing – I wonder how many bags of sick the developers have received instead of film. That man Ryan is brilliant at cost saving !
19:45 taxi past broken down Lyon plane.
1952: take off behind the BA flight.
20:30 – Final straw did you know a Ryan Air sandwiches are made from 3 slices of bread not 4 – what a rip off (and more expensive than BA Connect and that is saying something !)

Paris CDG

Travelled through the World's worse airport tonight - Paris CDG. It's such a maze with no space for actual departure gates and the world's only airport where tannoy announcements talk across eachother instead of being sequential. At one stage I suspect there were no less than 4 simultaneous announcements for leaving flights - combined withe its maze features I am amazed they get any passengers to the right gate.