Jetsetting

Second trip in a row that my Friday night flight has been INTERMINABLY delayed at LHR.

Last time, two weeks ago I was expecting it because it was snowing and I just didn’t have very high expectations that flights would be on time in those conditions.

This week the weather is a balmy 6-7 degrees C and I was really hopeful we’d get away on schedule. But after an hour sardined into the Piccadilly line and arriving at the check-in the friendly desk guy greeted me with “No check in. Plane still in Frankfurt. Delayed. Go and wait for announcement.” Heart plummets. Apparently high wind in Frankfurt was preventing planes from taking off there. So a few of us rebels just stayed in the queue in hope of it being a short wait while the lucky buggers going to Düsseldorf and München shuffled past and checked in.

Happily after about 10 minutes we were allowed to check in and go through. The big advantage of this was access to alcohol so I found a bar, ordered a large white wine and settled in to read my book. Meanwhile the “delayed for 20 minutes” message beside our flight number became a more and more obvious lie as our flight rose to the top of the list and only a couple of other flights remained after us. As soon as our gate was announced a flood of people hurried to the gate and squeezed in with a running commentary from the Americans in the queue behind me “Do you think this is the queue? I think this is the queue. Do you think it’s the queue? Is this the queue? (to everyone in 10 metre vicinity) etc”. In the end we were only delayed about 1 ½ hours.

Phew vent over.