Roskilde; Thursday, 25 July, 2024
A smooth journey through the airport and onto the plane which was all set to go about 10 minutes ahead of our scheduled departure time – which was a surprise as the flight had been at least 45 minutes late departing every night bar one for the last fortnight.
Of course when things have been that smooth something was bound to go wrong, and it was the announcement just as the last of the gate-checked hand baggage was being loaded into the hold that Danish air traffic control had just imposed slot restrictions and we wouldn’t be allowed to get airborne for another 30 minutes or so, but because they wanted to free up the ground crew they were going to push us back and then go and sit in a sin-bin out on the airfield to wait out our hold.
True to the captain’s announcement we were pushed back off of the stand and rolled down to the opposite end of the runway from the end take-offs were leaving from and sat there for a good 25 minutes before we were finally able to spool up the engines and taxi the full length of Heathrow and onto the runway to take off, about 45 minutes behind schedule.
Thankfully the flight was very smooth, and quick, with the captain able to make up most of the lost time and we landed and made it to the gate just 20 minutes late.
A short walk from the gate to the back of the queue stretching back from the three immigration desks that were open at 11:30pm, clearly Danish air traffic control had been lining up a whole load of non-Schengen flights to arrive together as the queue was already quite large and got a lot larger as our flight, and a couple of others merged onto the back. In the end it took nearly 30 minutes to make it through the queue and across the border, thankfully it was then only a ten-minute walk through the terminal, across the road, and over to my hotel for the night to check-in and turn in.
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