Off to Birmingham Airport – Donuts on the mound 2
In this donut filled adventure
- Continuing a new tradition
- Off to Birmingham Airport
- Aer Lingus EI263 Birmingham Airport to Dublin T2
- And there were planes. And Donuts
- Back to Dublin Airport
- Aer Lingus Regional EI6276 Dublin Airport to Birmingham Airport
- Back to the trains
- It’s Still About community
Early mornings
With sleep not being on my side at the moment (largely thanks to ongoing testing that would bore the test mad GLaDOS), I had gathered he stuff I’d need for the day. With an eye on costs as well, I decided to take the train to Birmingham Airport – and Uber into town.
TravelPeep preparing to run the show
The Uber arrived on time, and 10 minutes later (and a bit of persuasion to use the drop off point I wanted) I was at New Street station.
Into New Street station
I got my return ticket for the day. And for those who aren’t paying attention, how easy is it to buy the wrong rail ticket for the airport?
Very. And these tickets all go to the same location, with different operators. If you’re not local, this is confusing as heck.
Ticket in hand, I needed caffeine to wake up. Thankfully, there’s an overpriced Starbucks at the train station. Which was needed.
TravelPeep enjoys Starbucks…
Caffeine and TravelPeep in hand – I headed down to the waiting train
The train was once again – a Super Voyager. Unlike a few Saturdays ago – they actually decided to put two of them together, rather than use one unit – the net result is a 10 car train to London.
Although one of those trains was protesting it was not a number, but a free train.
(For those of you who don’t get the reference, this is the perfet time to look up Patrick Mcgoohan’s The Prisoner.
I went into some depth about the Super Voyager last time – and I’m not going to again. Suffice to say – for a 10 minute train ride, it’s more luxurious than a lot of local trains.
TravelPeep isn’t sure red is its colour.
The SuperVoyager cabin
Arriving into international, I headed up the stairs and through the ticket barrier – and that well trodden path the air rail link.
Coming into Birmingham Airport.
A shame Virgin Atlantic never served Birmingham…
To the Air-Rail Link
Another ride in the shuttle cable liner (and Emirates sales special), and I was in the departures level.
I popped down to the check-in level to pick up a boarding pass – and was confronted with the new self check in machines
Interesting.
The check-in machine.
PIN Pad.
As well as printing boarding passes, weight your luggage and printing baggage tickets, it also has a pin-pad for buy-ups and excess payments.
Tally about streamlining the process.
With my boarding passes in hand, I headed through to the hell of security.
Welcome to hell.
There are days when I wonder why I do the priority thing in terms of travel – and when I’m traveling sans-status, I’m reminded why.
Zoiks.
Needed.
Saturday am departures from Birmingham airport can be best described as “holiday traffic” with holidays on people’s mind, rather than following security regulations.
As such, movement was slow through Birmingham Airport security.
With me cleared through security – it was timers play “run the risk”… clearing the duty-free maze. Because the airport has to get its money from somewhere that’s not related to actual travel purposes.
I did this with some ease, and headed for another cup of coffee (because, by the end of the day – I was going to need all help in the world staying awake)
Joe, The Juice and TravelPeep.
With another cold coffee in hand, and with some minor guesswork which fare the plane would be departing – I headed to the international pier to watch planes.
And watch for the inbound service from Dublin.
Birmingham Airport traffic can be best described as varied.
And I mean that in the nicest way. You can get traffic from small ATR’s, through to the FlyBe Q400 fleet, the charter and holiday traffic of TUI, Thomas Cook and Jet2 (who have built up in heck of a presence), the indomitable Ryanair, the regular services from Lufthansa and KLM to their Megahubs, right up to Emirates and their twice daily Airbus A380.
Jet2.com Airbus A321 – hired in by the airline
Jet2.com Boeing 737-800
Primera Air – or “We can’t make Birmingham work, so we’re running away“
Wizz Air Airbus A321
Lufthansa Airbus A319
The inbound service made its way in – and today, I was in a treat in #avgeek terms. Why? I got one of the special livery Airbus A320s that Aer Lingus operate.
This one is in the retro colour scheme.
With the plane racing in, there was a mass build up at the gate. It didn’t help there was a Jet2 flight going from the gate next to it.
TravelPeep ponders about planes. Wait till it sees the costs to buy one…
Boarding was called, with priority boarding, then everyone else. Of course – it didn’t help they actually hadn’t started boarding – but were holding people in the stairway. Because 1) that’s safe and 2) the ramp and crew haven’t given clearance to board…
Safe queuing…
Eventually, we were given clearance to proceed to the tarmac and the waiting A320.
Next: EI263 Birmingham to Dublin
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