TheFlyingDoctor

British Airways service BA491 from Gibraltar (GIB) to London Heathrow (LHR); flown by G-EUUE, an airbus A320-200. Scheduled Depature 13:10; flight time 2h50. Seat 4D (Club Europe, aisle seat).
Actually flown: Malaga (AGP) to LHR, departed 18:45, flight time 2h25.


To avoid too much dashing around, I try to distinguish between actual holiday, and travel days. With the BA service from Gibraltar departing at lunch time, then, I envisaged a leisurely breakfast, some time in the lounge, a light meal on the plane, some slack time in London to get properly fed, before an evening train back to Bristol (for which I'd managed to snag a first class ticket for just £26).

However, this ended up being a travel day in the truest sense, only making it home on the same date I left thanks to the UK being an hour behind the rest of the continent. Here then is my tale of woe- and I must simultaneously apologise for the lack of photos (the dslr battery being exhausted by this point), and recognise that things could have been much worse. A five hour delay and a duff meal is hardly the end of the world (especially after such a week of luxury), but the experience at the time is deeply frustrating. So I hope you'll allow me the indulgence to vent, and at least gain something from the insight into how the situation is handled when Gibraltar's runway proves even more challenging than usual.

So, yes. The day at least started in accordance with the plan, dawning as bright as ever, so much so that I made sure my breakfast spot offered shade. After a final amble around part of town and the harbour, I collected my case and bid farewell to my hosts on the Con Dios, and set out for the airport. The distance can be covered in a matter of minutes, but I foolishly timed it to hit the runway just as Winston Churchill Avenue was closing to let a Monarch flight land. I wished I still had some camera batteries!

Having given way to the plane (always a wise choice) I was soon at the departures terminal- the distinctly less impressive of the two. Despite its diminutive size, it does manage to have a separate club europe check-in desk, once you fight through the crowds forming the easyjet and eurotraveller 'lines'. Naturally security is just one queue, although it did split into two attendants handing out trays before re-merging for the scanner. The gate area is basically just seating for the two doors, with a couple of retail offerings at the edge, but I had no need to loiter as I'd been issued with a code for the door on the far side, leading to the lounge. After Rome and Heathrow, this seemed very basic - but it's cool, quiet, and you can get a comfy seat with some free water and biscuits. It also offered the spectacle of seeing someone thrown out for not being on the list - he and his companion had been ahead of me in the CE queue, but apparently were travelling ET, so I wonder if in fact they were entitled to the lounge through status but didn't know this to fight for it. Still, it demonstrated that you wouldn't be able to hang around for long if you tailgated your way in, and made me momentarily nervous about my own presence until my boarding pass was examined and deemed suitable. But it's perhaps for the best that they're defensive, because the lounge was at capacity seating-wise by 12:15, still 40 minutes before gate close.

Out of a mixture of boredom and fanatical attention to detail, I kept a log of the following six hours with by-the-minute updates on progress (or lack of) on my ipad. For convenience I'll reproduce it in that format here, albeit with some retrospective editing.


12:30 they announced that BA490- the plane that would subsequently turn into our service, BA491 - couldn't land due to the weather conditions, which was the first time I paid proper attention to the view out the window. Or rather, the lack of it! The rock was absent not because of the angle, but because sometime during checkin/security fog had sprung up off the sea to engulf it.

12:47 There was a promising roar of jet engines, but alas this was but the closest of a number of go-arounds.

13:10 Our official departure time; it was announced that the plane was going to Malaga, instead. This, however, did not seal our fate, nor immediately set things in motion - it was up to the pilot to decide whether to wait for clearer skies and bring the plane here, or to commit to Malaga and get us all there instead.


13:45 The BA app is now listing BA491 as cancelled, after a series of flirtations with departure times that topped out at 16:17. The rumour is that we'll be getting the bus. Interestingly, Easyjet were taking the other option, but for all I know their passengers are still waiting! We were also told that we'd have to collect our hold luggage now, which implied we'd be doing security again at Malaga.

14:04 It's confirmed that we'll be going to Malaga, but fortunately, the coaches are already here (rather than having to first drive here from Spain).

14:24 We're sent to 'door 3' to collect our belongings - there isn't really a third gate, this is just a door, past the gents toilets, that leads to the old luggage carousel. At least those of us in the lounge got advance notice, and thus were able to join those requiring assistance or travelling with young infants at the head of this first (of many) queues. I'd also managed to liberate the last food item from the lounge on the way out- a chocolate muffin, sitting well on the three chocolate bourbon biscuits I'd had earlier.

14:30 I have located my case from amongst the piles- no notion of priority baggage here!

14:30 and 20 seconds - I find myself loading my case into the coach outside. Since all cases need to go to Malaga, and all the coaches will be going to Malaga, I find myself thinking that surely they could have sped this up by loading them en masse?

14:40 Priority boarding (of sorts) has got me on the first coach, which also features FlyerTalk's favourite, the parents with small children. Some malicious relative suggests a rousing round of "the wheels on the bus" to a toddler, to a look of horror from the parents.

14:57 Everyone is settled in on the coach, which all the paraphernalia necessary to keep our younger passengers comfortable. And so we set off for Malaga, taking advantage of the fact that you can turn straight off the runway onto the main road.

14:58 We arrive at the Spanish border, where we are told we must disembark with all our stuff, extract our particular case from the hold, and clear customs. Now the earlier kerfuffle with finding our own luggage makes sense, but the process as a whole certainly doesn't- I could have walked myself to the border and done this by now!

15:12 Back on the coach, but various people have decided to play musical chairs, which makes it harder for the families to arrange themselves as conveniently before. The one advantage of all this is that I've been able to pull some crisps and a packet of jelly babies (my top travel essential!) from my suitcase to see me through.

15:25 A sign declares 115km to Malaga, which I optimistically logged as "about an hour" in my first note.

15:50 A second sign has us 78k from Malaga, which makes 37k in 25 minutes, and thus I continue to estimate "about an hour". I eat my crisps anyway.

16:39 Catch sight of the airfield in the distance, the first thing I've been happy to see in an hour and a half. By this point I'd decided that I hadn't wanted to see Spain in the first place, was entirely correct in that decision, and should vow to never come here again. I've also eaten a potentially nauseating quantity of jelly babies.

16:48 Malaga airport is significantly larger than Gibraltar's- it may even be larger than Gibraltar. Mercifully, BA491 has been transplanted to the departure board here, but the desk crew aren't ready (or especially interested). Some passengers are experiencing frayed patience by this stage: with some foot/luggage collisions in the queue drawing arguments. I try to calm people down by pointing out the plane won't be going anywhere until we're all through anyway, and at least they haven't paid as much as I have for this shambles. It also becomes clear that to the general public, IAG owning Iberia and BA means they count as "the same thing" and so their staff should be helping us, but banks of their desks remain unavailable to us.

17:11 Airside! Security was reasonably swift, but then, we've all had a practice run earlier. Since our gate - B15 - is in the opposite direction to the lounges, I figure I should head straight there rather than risk being 'that guy' who holds us up even further for the sake of a sandwich.

18:35 We've been on the plane for quite some time without making any obvious progress, before the pilot explains that there should have been three coaches from Malaga, but one broke down and we are thus going to get underway without 28 passengers. In his words "today has been a very bad day" and from his tone it seemed that they'd experienced as much unhelpfulness from the Spanish authorities as we had. I have to wonder what the status of cargo intended for Gibraltar from the UK is; or of passengers who had the right to enter the UK, but not to cross the Spanish border to enter Schengen and so actually get to the plane.

19:30 My intended train leaves Paddington, and so my first class quiet coach ticket is now a £26 bookmark. More disappointing, though, is the meal service- with only 2 unused seats in Club, and mine the last of them to be served, all of the actually-appealing Chicken-based meals have gone. This leaves a prawn pasta, that sadly is no use for me (although perhaps I should have just picked the prawns off and hoped for the best). I posted about this shortly after getting home, and the general FT consensus is that one shouldn't expect a choice of meals to be guaranteed (and that's not a debate I want to reopen here!), but it was the straw that broke this particular camel's back. Having never had anything resembling lunch or dinner, I was really happy just to get a meal (unlike the poor folks in ET), but to have something that looked genuinely appetising wafted through the cabin and served to everyone else who wanted it (all but one) then to be excluded just tipped me over the edge. All credit to the cabin crew, they did go rummage in the galley and found me an alternative pasta dish, but even they admitted it was extremely bland.

19:45 (UK time) We'd hoped to be landing by now (well, I'd hoped to be practically in Bristol by now, but you get the idea).

20:10 (UK time) Finally landed, and given the 13C temperature and rain, definitely in England and not some hilarious alternative.

20:34 I have my luggage, and fast track border control, whilst not especially swift, does seem a lot better than the regular lane. Which is handy, as a wonderful friend has SMS'd me the times and prices of onward travel options. The sanest option seems to be a coach, for which I am relieved of £40 - and could have been stung for an extra luggage charge had they been more attentive, since National Express is rather less generous than Club Europe with respect to 'cabin' baggage.

21:20 The coach sets off, and is almost packed to capacity. However, the trials of the day are clearly etched in my face (which even in a good mood has been described as 'serial killer-ish' by friends!) and so no-one decides to take either of the back-row seats next to me. Thus I can spread out a bit at least.

21:22 A child begins screaming. I remember that I have both noise-cancelling headphones and an ipad, and decide to make the best of the coach's underwhelming pace by fitting in another film.

23:55 I stumble through my front door in Bristol, after the 20 minute walk home from the bus station. With luggage. Uphill. In the rain.


I would like to reiterate that I was entirely satisfied with BA's crew throughout this experience - they clearly recognised we weren't happy, and hadn't exactly been having a picnic themselves. I speculatively filed a strongly-worded (but mostly groundless) complaint letter with customer services, and although they took a full month to reply, when they did so it was clear that their response had been composed by an actual human being. Each point I raised was addressed, sympathies that they didn't warrant compensation were conveyed, and at the end I found I'd been slung 10,000 avios in pity anyway.

So, full marks to BA for making the best of a bad situation; whilst a golden muppet award goes to whoever came up with the rules that govern how passengers can (or can't) be moved from Gib to Spanish airports. Surely, having all been through Gibraltan security, we could just be loaded onto the coaches and conveyed straight to the plane, rather than having to do the luggage, customs and security dance? Perhaps they're just trying to get us back for that jubilee flotilla...

and there ends my report. Thanks for reading, and I hope both that some of you will have been inspired to try this little slice of Britishness in the Med, and that are you are able to get out more easily when you've had your fill!