Würzburg; Thursday, 08 December, 2022

I made it to the airport just as the evening rush was subsiding so the queues for security were pretty lengthy, but not many people were joining once I was in the queue so it didn’t take that long to get through.

Our flight was called and started to board in plenty of time, but it turned out that despite BA asking everyone to check in rolling suitcases as it was a completely full flight and space was limited there was still the usual luggage Tetris going on that meant we weren’t all closed up until several minutes past our original departure time.

That meant we missed our slot for the de-icing which potentially put us at the back of a long 90 minute queue and then a real risk that with that delay we might not make it to Frankfurt before the night flight ban kicked in.

A nervous 25 minutes whilst the captain and first officer tried phoning everyone from the ground teams up Heathrow eventually relented and opened up a second de-icing station, allowing us to head straight there and skip the queue.

By the time we took off it was nearly an hour late, but with a tail wind we made it down into Frankfurt only 40 minutes late and a good half hour ahead of the curfew. Sadly it didn’t look like anyone had told the ground crew about he speedy flight as they took 20 minutes to turn up and put the steps against the plane, despite the bus already waiting for us as we arrived.

The slightly poor service from Frankfurt Airport continued into baggage reclaim where we were left waiting for another 30 minutes before the bags finally came around.

I had originally intended on getting the train into the city, but with the trains now at the point where they dropped from every 15 minutes to every 30, and the likelihood that I was about to miss one, I decided to chuck money at the problem and 20 minutes later, and €40 lighter the taxi dropped me off at my hotel where I was able to checkin and finally get to bed.