Lingfield Racecourse

“Did you enjoy your time in Europe?” asks the border police as I leave the EU. “Yeah I had a great time thanks.” “That’s great, have a good trip home.” I’ve always had good interactions with border police at Amsterdam airport. The Dutch are friendly folk. Last time Thom and I came through here we had 2 very hot friendly Dutch men who made us consider why we were leaving 😈. Once in the non Schengen part of the airport I headed to the KLM lounge.

It’s a big lounge with heaps of seating across 2 levels. The bar and restaurant where you can buy a full meal upstairs were closed, but the free bar and buffet downstairs were alive and pumping. I wasn’t that hungry after my big feed in the last lounge and good food on my flight so I grabbed a glass of bubbles and charged my phone while I chilled on quite a a comfy high backed chair.

A slight delay to departure and a gate change but nothing too bad. Or so I thought. Once at the gate I see that the bags are being loaded and then we’re told it will an other 10min delay. After that group 1 is asked to board, but wait in the aerobridge while they fix a technical issue. That issue, the captain comes to inform us, is a water leak and everything is wet. Fair enough. Waiting for engineering to stop the leak and cleaning to clean the plane.

This is where it starts to get fun. I do love eavesdropping on a complaining American who is not in his beloved America. He is behind me on the phone explaining a conversation he had with a “horrible border guard” when leaving Amsterdam. For background, it seems he got robbed and lost his passport so was travelling on an emergency document. “When did you enter Europe”. “I entered London on (insert date here)”. “The UK isn’t in the EU, when did you enter the European Union?”. “Well that’s debatable that the UK isn’t in Europe.”

Like seriously dude, what rock have you been living under. Even despite Brexit, the UK was never in Schengen! Anyway, he continues the rant apparently explaining the difference between an airline ticket and boarding pass to the agent when asked to produce evidence of when he entered the the EU. Clearly all the border guard wanted is to ensure he hadn’t overstayed his 90 days, but this American guy was just being a jerk.

He concludes his conversation with “I’ll finally be on American soil when I get on board American flight 57 tomorrow.” Umm yeah, that’s no how it works bro, but you do you! He’s got to enter the UK tonight before he boards his American soil containing flight tomorrow, so I hope UK border force also give him hell. While I’m quite entertained by this conversation, it turns out that while this has been occupying me, the crew realise this plane isn’t fixable so quickly. We’re deboarded and moved to a new gate.

I have a look at our new estimated departure time of 10pm, and compare that to Heathrow’s curfew of 11pm. With the time change it should be ok. Just in case I start looking at alternate flights from here to Singapore in the event this flight doesn’t go ahead today. While I do this, boarding commences, so looks like I won’t be needing an alternative today. I wonder how my bag is going with all these changes 🤔.

With no leaks in sight, I board this newer 737-800, and settle into my newer seat in 2F. Euro business again. We taxi to the furthest runway at a good speed (aka - we floor it to the the runway that is half way to London) and zoom off for a 45min flight to Heathrow.

The meal box is the same design as last time but swap the nuts for banana chips and the meal for an Asian noodle with raw tuna. I push the tuna aside (gross) and enjoy the meal with another glass of the French wine. The macaroons are again delish. I land into a very quiet terminal 4 at Heathrow, my first time in this terminal.

While waiting for the bags I get to listen in to our charming American’s critique. “There was never a water leak, they just said that because really what happened is the crew timed out.” Yeah, cause they’d load one plane full of bags, unload it, tow a new aircraft to a different gate, reload the bags just to make it appear there was something wrong with the plane… sure… believe what you want man.

A 50 min Uber ride with a lovely Românian man who had partied a bit hard the night before and was a little sleepy and I was at Gatwick ready for a short sleep. Thanks KLM for the great flights bring me and my bag to London.Read more