While I am going through my latest photo work to share after the long weekend in Rome I thought I'd share with you one of my ongoing stories of troubles with travels I have been having since November.
As has become quite customary for me since then there has been something that just seems to go wrong on my part of the trip and on this one, I get to tell the story of two halves, where one person has it all smooth running, and the other (me) has the real nightmare. And thats with us both on the same flight!!
So grab yourself some motor oil looking Gin found within the duty free store in Rome and sit in, as this is a story!
So flight leaving Rome on the Monday afternoon, everything is looking as it should, looking like we will be leaving on time.
Reality was it was delayed 10 minutes arriving so that had a rolling knock on effect so we didn't board until 10 minutes later, in turn delaying rollback by that time.
So We're onboard an A319 similar to this one here and finally start taxing, although this takes 20 minutes and now we are already 30 minutes behind schedule, and since this is heading to Heathrow, its never always smooth getting into there on time if forced into a holding pattern.
Now due to all this the flight didn't arrive until 3:30pm, and I had a connecting flight to continue to Edinburgh at 5pm. Plenty of time still? it should be, but this is when things split in two.
I was travelling with a friend, who due to having booked their flights a few weeks before me, was able to get seating further up front of the aircraft. And thanks to Heathrow, they forced the plane to park up and have us all bussed to the terminal. My friends on the first bus. She managed to get off the plane, onto the bus, direct to the terminal all within 5 minutes. Through the passport e-gates for UK nationals, then through security within 15 minutes, with enough time to pick up a drink, sit down and wait for boarding to be called.
Now it's my turn. I am on bus 2. And this is where it all goes wrong!
Thanks to ATC and Ground Control navigating aircraft, they forced our bus to stop and allow this very A380 past us. I assume on safety grounds as it has quite the wake after it which we did feel.
So a couple of minutes pass and the A380 passes. I think great we can go, but nope we wait some more, and a Cathy Pacific B777 goes past, then a Virgin B787...
and then a BA A320 which by this point I had stopped counting. As there were more that were let past, possibly 10 in total. We finally are allowed through, after waiting 15 minutes for all this aircraft activity.
Okay, so finally at the Terminal, and its 1 hour 10 minutes until flight time. This is still okay. Although some walking is now involved from the drop off point to passport control so thats 10 minutes gone there. Only the e-gates have stopped working! And all us trying to connect to the Edinburgh flight are now having to queue up with the none UK and non e-gate travellers! 20 minutes pass, still standing in the queue, there are some others in the same situation as me.
The BA girl realises there is an issue, there are only three folk on boarder security duty and they are working at the pace of the sloth from Zootopia!
So she calls all of us to the front, where we continue to queue for another 10 minutes with zero progress being made. BA girl clocks this is going on, and spots the e-gates are working again, so she calls us over, tells everyone how long we have been waiting and tells the Aberdeen flight people to shut up (she wins a medal for that!) since they have been their a fraction of the time.
By this point o making it through the e-gate that was an extra 20 to 30 minutes delay added on. With 30 minutes to go before the next flight!
Thankfully security realised what was going on and let us on the Edinburgh (and the Aberdeen ones who were in the queue too) flight through fast track to get us through quickly. So no waiting here, At this point the time was 4:40pm, flight departure was 5pm. I can only assume the gate was radioed that there were a few of us delayed by the airport itself since par for the course so far the gate was the most furthest away from security, so me and the other Edinburgh folk make it to the gate at 4:45! We're let on without any trouble, clearly knowing we've been through enough by this point!
Finally on the plane with time to spare, I catch glimpse of my friend, sitting relaxed, listening to music, but they spot me and quickly hand me over a tin of Sprite knowing of the nightmare I had been going through in comparison to her smooth path.
Still I'm on board, everything's put away and we are taxing on time, onboard another A319 where I catch glimpse of this A320 Neo against the sunsetting colours (and pollution...).
Also spot the Cathy Pacific A350 as well!
Now this flight was the perfect examples of a tale of two people, all because one person was closer to the front for getting off the plane followed by a smallball chain of events that I had totally no control over.
And if you think that was bad, then you've not heard the stories from December, or the one from November, or even the one from May!! I've a collection of them! 😭😂
In the meantime, enjoy the A320 sunset!
