Donuts in Dublin – Off to Birmingham Airprot
In this fun day out
- Donuts in Dublin
- Off to BHX
- EI263 Birmingham to Dublin Airport
- Watching planes on the mound
- Back through the Irish Shopping Maze
- EI3276 Dublin to Birmingham
- What is this bus up to?
- Community is everything
5:30am
The sound of the phone going off indicates it’s time to get my body out of bed. Not that gets any easier when it’s Saturday and your body wants to stay comfortable in-situ.
However, after some persuasion, my bag was gathered, and it was time to get going. Of course, the cheap person in me lost – and I elected to taxi over to the airport, rather than deal with the trains first thing in the morning,
With a choice of Ola and Uber in Birmingham, I chose Ola with a promise of £5 off. Alas, Ola Cab app is a lot less “polished” than Ubers, with it randomly crashing and not posting details of trips going on.
Eventually, a car turned up to whisk me to the airport – going via the Motorways. Put it simply – the A45 is too unreliable except in the middle of the night. Any time of day, it’s easier to take the M6/M42 and be done with it.
With a 20-minute ride done and dusted, I turned up at the airport at 6:20. My card got dinged for £23 – the £5 saving had been mostly been swallowed in the “drop off fee” that the airport charges.
Oh well. One to chalk up to experience.
With that done, it was time to head into the Birmingham Airport complex.
With a simple run like this, I headed straight to the escalators. Whilst I normally would love a printed boarding pass, the self-check-in area was rammed.
That normally bodes ill for security. I took that as a message to get my backside in gear and get rolling.
I Headed up the escalators and to the main security entry point, things looked busy – but not overly awful.
Up up and away!
The main se
I entered the area, and blipped my boarding pass, expecting to see a queue in short order.
In fact, the only queue I saw was just before the security machines – compared to it being halfway down the waiting area.
It’s a minor miracle.
Security was handled quickly, with my bags and items going through the scanners at a reasonable speed.
With that, it was time to run the risk. Yes, my friends. It’s the Duty-Free maze we all come to love and hate.
As the only thing I’m wanting at this time of the morning is a strong coffee, I made haste through the duty-free and shopping zone that Birmingham Airport so much loves, and through to the international wing of the terminal where there’s a nice quiet branch of Costa coffee.
Regular readers know I prefer Starbucks but given the choice of Pret’s brown water or Costa’s…. Well… it’s an easy win for Costa (That, and Jo and the Juice has closed, replaced with an M&S food)
With a cup of brown been jitter juice in my hands, it was time to watch aeroplanes for a while. Well, it beats attempting to be ripped off by duty-free doesn’t it?
Birmingham Airport’s traffic can be described as a mixture of scheduled traffic from full-service carriers, an attempted hub for low-cost carriers and regionals, and a lot of holiday traffic. In the early morning slots, it means that the airport is home to Jet2, Thomas Cook Airlines and so on before Ryanair, Lufthansa and so on take-over.
Jet2 Boeing 737-800
TUI Boeing 757-200
Qatar Airways Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
Lufthansa Airbus A319
Eurowings de Havlland Dash8-Q400
It’s also home to a fair few charters – such as this Olympus Airline aircraft who were flying for Thomas Cook.
Those of you with a keen eye will recognise the paintwork as Monarch, but with a new tail and billboard titling.
EI262 arrived on time at Birmingham, with it settling into the gate that the Thomas Cook plane was a few minutes earlier.
Ahh. We meet.
Of course, with a plane turning up at the gate, the great queuing game began.
I joined the back of it – as I would have liked to keep my bag in the overhead bin rather than at my feet for the flight.
Boarding was called for priority passengers, and then the rest of us. After progressing through the queue my mobile boarding pass was blipped – and I was let through.
Next: EI263 Birmingham to Dublin.
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