Kalamaki; Tuesday, 07 October, 2025

I’d been informed by text that my transfer would pick me up from the hotel at 11:00 and that I had to be ready 15 minutes beforehand which meant that there was very little I could do this morning, so instead I had a bit of a lie in and a late breakfast before heading back to my room to pack, and to check on the inbound flight which had successfully departed Gatwick only a few minutes behind schedule.

The transfer turned up a couple of minutes before 11 and for once I was the last pickup, so we drove direct to the terminal and with the efficient operation TUI have in place I was through and in the gate lounge within 30 minutes.

The boarding passes all said that boarding closed at 12:55 which was clearly a ploy to get everyone together in the gate area ahead of the staff arriving just after 13:00 and the buses over to the plane turning up about 10 minutes later, but with most people having hold luggage from fortnight holidays, a quick boarding process was achieved as there wasn’t luggage locker Tetris on board the plane, and we were all closed up and ready to head back to London on time.

A very smooth flight and for the first time in a long time I was on a flight where the seatbelt sign went out once we’d reached the climb and didn’t come back on again until about 15 minutes out from Gatwick with the whole flight being totally smooth.

If they’d had a better gate we may even have been early, but our plane was sent to almost the furthest point that’s still technically the North Terminal so by the time we were disembarking it was right on our scheduled arrival time. Thankfully it was a relatively smooth journey through the airport, with my bags only being a couple of minutes behind me.

I managed to get straight onto a shuttle back to the South Terminal, and more importantly got my Oyster card tapped into the system at 15:54, well ahead of the 16:00 switch to peak pricing, meaning my journey back home was barely £8 rather than nearly £13!