TRIP REPORT: A Change of Scenery – Off to Birmingham Airport

Off to Birmingham Airport
A Change of Scenery

In this adventure

• Well, 2020 is turning out to be a fine year for travel…
• Travel preparations
• Off to Birmingham Airport
• LH959 Birmingham to Frankfurt-am-Main International
• Entering Germany
• Frankfurt Airport XXL Tour
• Into Frankfurt
• Hotel: Mercure Hotel City Messe, Frankfurt
• Exploring Frankfurt in these odd times
• Back to FRA
• LH954 Frankfurt to Birmingham
• Welcome back to the UK
• A welcome change

Off we go – The Birmingham airport travel experience.

Beep, beep, beep. The one part of travel I haven’t missed – the four am wake up call. Yes, I’m still in bits from a heavy week in the office, but my heft myself awake, shove a coffee in my face and pick up my bag – which is ready to roll.

Checking I had my passport in my bag, I was set to go.

There is a place for Uber when it comes to travel, and today is a perfect example. That and the train and bus networks don’t know how to operate at the moment.

Then again, did it ever?

With the driver arriving, I directed them to take the slower, but shorter route along the A45 to the airport, as opposed to taking the M6/M42

A 20-minute drive, and once again, I was greeted by the joy of a £3 meet and greet drop-off area to be tagged on my Uber bill…

Wonderful.

Welcome to depatures.

With that done, it was time to head indoors.

It seems that the basic precautions are in place at the airport, with one way systems. Also, there’s a temperature scan as you walk into the airport.

With that done, I headed upstairs to the departures area, to the security area. The passenger mix was mostly leisure passengers, however, it seems that security had slowed down a lot due to social distancing.

Only spotted one person disobey this…

It didn’t help that some passengers had forgotten security rules. Like bringing water bottles.

Even one of my hand sanitiser bottles was pulled over for being oversized by 25ml (it’s nice to see the War on Liquids hasn’t abated in this time of pandemics).

C’mon people.

With security done, it was time to head into the waiting area, and that, of course, means duty-free. Thankfully there were plenty of signs to passengers to not touch items unless they were willing to buy them.

I skipped past this.

That looks… quiet. A sign of the times.

I passed through duty-free into the main terminal, where I stopped to pick up some replacement hand sanitizer, as well as a power adapter (the review for that pile of rubbish is coming shortly).

With those things done, boarding time was coming close. I, therefore, headed to the International pier to wait for the flight.

Hopscotch?

Tip Toe…

LH959 was booked to depart from Gate 48 – a short walk from the main waiting area.

To the gate

Getting to the gate, it seems someone forgot 1) reboot their information screen and 2) hasn’t paid for a Windows 10 licence.

Windows 7. Such a classic out-of-support operating system…

Air India 787-8

I settled in and swapped mask from my fabric mask for a KN95. This would be my friend for many hours to come.

Eventually, the gate opened, with passengers asked to enter the gate.  Boarding passes and passports were checked. With that done, I spied the aircraft that would be taking me to Frankfurt – an Airbus A320neo.

The Matrix awaits…

As the gate pen filled. There was the obvious wait – but after a while, boarding commenced. Boarding was completed by class – so business class passengers went first, then the economy class passengers in no particular order.

Time to head down…

I took my place in the queue and headed down the jetway to something I thought I wasn’t going to do this year.

And off we go!

Next: LH959 Birmingham to Frankfurt.

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