I flew VIE-LHR-EDI yesterday. VIE-LHR was about a third full, amazing considering this is down to 2x weekly. Boarding was easy (we were priority so don’t know if it was done by row number), disembarkation was by 5 rows at a time and was pretty efficient. Actually a pleasant flight. Crew were great.

LHR was deserted. This was my first time there since March. Could not believe my eyes. We left the airport for a few hours due to long connection, on returning the BA check-in area was almost completely empty, I saw around 5 other passengers at T5 north security, and airside was also very quiet. LHR-EDI boarded extremely slowly, it took around 35 minutes to board an A320. The flight was packed and “social distancing” impossible, slightly defeating the purpose of some of the other measures in place. I suspect this is largely due to them pulling the afternoon flight from the schedule a couple of weeks ago. The reason for the delay was blamed on a terminal computer failure and having to offload someone. Though passengers were simply coming on one at a time, in dribs and drabs. Passengers were all however “well behaved” on board.

EDI itself was another shock to the eyes, some years ago I started to seriously dislike this airport due to overcrowding and insufficient capacity to deal with passenger volume, preferring instead to use GLA where possible. To see it so absolutely dead was very strange, it basically looked closed. That and the sight at LHR, with barely any aircraft movements visible on a Friday afternoon/evening, really hit home the kind of hit that aviation is taking.

All in all it was actually a pleasant day’s flying (with the exception of the tedious boarding of LHR-EDI), and border/quarantine measures aside, I would be perfectly happy to travel again during these times. Short haul only though, the mask became a real nuisance later in the day.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, T5 immigration was very slow. Few staff on duty, plus about a third of passengers hadn’t completed the passenger locator form. About 40 mins to get through despite the queue not being that long.