London – Amsterdam, BMI economy class

As so the great leveler, business class with frequent flyer status one day, discount economy nobody the next as I head back to LHR for a short flight to AMS with BMI.

Check in with BMI is a zoo, you queue to use the self service check-in machines then you queue again to check in your bag where they re-issue your boarding pass and change the seat you had selected at self check-in, the whole process taking 40 mins.

Anyway I get through that performance and then have the wait for a gate to be advised, then queue to enter the gate as they want to change peoples boarding passes again and reallocate seats, I ended up with my third different seat allocation, well whatever, its only an hour long flight.

The flight itself on an A319 was pretty non-descript, the main point of interest was watching the A380 from Singapore Airlines take off ahead off us, although I’d watched the same aircraft leave from Sydney a few days earlier this was a closer view, that plane is u-g-l-y.

During the flight the usual food for sale offerings were made, I bought a bottle of water as I had a really sore throat but otherwise left the food as it wasn’t very inviting. Landing in AMS was around 30 mins late but clearing customs was pretty quick and the bags were out not long after.

The train from the airport into the city is easy to use and cheap and takes you right to the heart of the city which is great.

Barcelona – London Stansted, easyJet

So the hop back to London. Ah yes, easyJet, read into what you will but I decided to approach this trip as a social experiment, if I and my bag got to London in one piece then whatever else happened along the way so be it.

Check-in was comparatively easy compared to the BMI experience, a 20 min queue, a very friendly check-in agent and I’m off upstairs to the gate. My flight was boarding from an area where all the passengers are bused to their aircraft, there were a number of easyJet flights all due to depart at the same time and just to confuse everyone they changed the gates at the last minute. This worked out pretty well for me as I had been sitting down and was miles away from the gate my flight was going to depart from, only to end up about 2 meters away from the new gate that was allocated to the flight.

After the ‘speedy-boarding’ call for people who had paid more I gather those of us with ‘A’ boarding passes were allowed on to the bus. A short (hot) ride in the bus to another (air)bus A319 which was equally as hot. 45 minutes later and we are still waiting for the other passengers to arrive, they finally do and as this is a full flight all the seats are taken, thankfully I’d got an isle seat near the back so had a bit of air coming in from the open rear door while we waited.

The flight itself dragged on a bit and yes the leg space is really tight but for a 2 hour flight it was okay and we arrived at Stansted 30 minutes late. Again the train from Stansted into the city was quick and easy to use and I was on it heading into London 45 mins after landing.

Next up London to Hong Kong, BA First Class.