Examining the new at AIX18 – Back to Hamburg Airport
- Other airports exist other than Heathrow
- Did I mention I hate suitcases? Off to Birmingham Airport
- FlyBe BE7109 Birmingham to Hamburg
- Into Hamburg
- The IBIS Budget St Pauli
- Aircraft Interiors Expo – A look back at the coverage
- The Crystal Cabin Awards 2018
- Back to Hamburg Airport
- FlyBe BE7110 Hamburg to Birmingham
- Home James
- Innovation is key. Also being prepared
With AIX over for another year, it was time to head out and begin the short road home. After retrieving my rucksack that was now deputising for… well… everything, I headed down to the U-Bahn for the ride to the Haptbahnhof.
Off we go…
And down…
Tum-tee-tum.
With the Haptbahnhof more chaotic than usual at peak time on the S-Bahn platforms, I timed it wrong for the ride back to the Airport with a train pulling out in front of me. No matter – it gave me time to navigate the station.
Oh, it’s busy over in the Regio/S-Bahn Platforms…
TIP: When catching S1/11 to the Airport, ensure you get on the first three carriages. Otherwise you’ll end up in Poppenbüttel.
Busy platform is busy
Although a CD Train at Hamburg? That’s a little unusual.
A six-minute wait… and an S11 train finally appeared.
Gutten tag S11.
And I’m going to be honest – at this point – it was all a blur. My brain was have trouble processing anything. Another thing it couldn’t process was FlyBe not allowing online check-in.
1) What is the “check in at airport rubbish and 2) 3h 10 to Birmingham on a 1h 30 segment???
I would deal with that when I got to the airport.
Arriving at Hamburg Airport early, I was hoping to have a boarding pass in hand, and slip into the lounge for some soup from the magical soup machine.
Up we go.
One of these was tempting. But in the end… I skipped it. For the best maybe.
I spent a little time ensuring the luggage was all compressed into my main two bags. And quietly prayed that I would get this aboard the plane.
Done.
Alas, when I got to the airport at round sixish – I found that there was no kiosk functionality for FlyBe… nor an agent – which wasn’t due until 7:45.
*crickets*
Well that’s ultra passenger friendly FlyBe.
With more than an hour of time in my hand, and not wanting to even flip the laptop out to write something (because after 4 days of working the press, the last thing I wanted to do was write more stuff), I had a long wander around the airport.
And ended up in the Airport supermarket.
Gotta love the airport Edeka.
Who needs real flowers when you can have… pasta flowers!
BiFi.
Well I wouldn’t be having dinner in the lounge – rather a 400gramm or so Edeka Salad bar dinner.
Das Salat Bar!
Dinner.
I’ve had worse things in my life.
With that, and a long walk around the terminal, I headed back up to Terminal 1… and ran into the queue from heck. Yes. People were queuing up to check in. How twee.
In front…
And behind.
I got in at the mid-way of the queue. It didn’t get any shorter.
With one check-in desk to get everyone processed, the agent was taking their time, weighing every bag that was going through, as well as marking out a lot of bags for gate checking.
Eventually, I made my way to the front of the queue, and followed the procedure. A boarding pass unhappily spat out from the agents printer, and I was cleared to proceed to security.
With trade shows, I collect an awful lot of stuff. And unsurprisingly, my bags were pulled over for breaking apart as they were packed too densely.
A long take-a-part of my luggage ensued, and eventually, all my stuff was deemed as safe to fly. With that done, I did a partial re-pack there and then at the security area, and headed off to a quiet area to do a proper re-pack
No time for lounges then.
And rebuild these bags. Again.
On the plus side, with the enforced wait in the public area, any benefit of staying the lounge had long been eroded to nothing.
With the bags looking happier than they did, I sat and watched the world in darkness – dusk had long passed and night was now visible
With not much more to do and time ticking on to boarding, I headed down the mid-end B gates to leave the Schegen zone.
Except I discovered when entering the Non-Schengen Zone that our inbound flight was delayed.
Finally – FlyMayBe living up to its name. Although this wasn’t announced (oh surprise) until I asked the gate agent.
I guess the Flybe attitude rubs off on its handlers as well as its planes.
Meanwhile outside, an Emirates Boeing 777 was looking happy for itself as it loaded up for the return journey to Dubai.
Eventually, a line began to build for boarding. I joined it as the flashing green lights for boarding started to flash.
My boarding pass was zapped, and I headed down to the waiting bus
To the bus.
Next: FlyBe BE7110 Hamburg to Birmingham
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