This Sunday night I had the pleasure of returning to Dubai from London on Gulf Air while they were dealing with the cyber attack on the Collins check-in system.

Queues at the check-in desk were long and in fact the entire corridor of queueing moved very slowly. Falcon Gold, the business class, had its own line as did the flight crew and cabin crew.
Check-in was entirely paper based. I was carrying one large suitcase and one plastic wrapped cardboard box. The check-in agent was on the phone to a support person reading out my itinerary and informing her of the bags I was checking in. She was applying pre-printed barcodes to my luggage (one of which had to go to the oversized items). I suspected I would not see my bags again for about a week.

Proceeding through the fast track security line (where a forgotten can of soda was identified in the scanners but allows to pass through) was painless and I proceeded to the Terminal 4 Gulf lounge. The lounge was busy as there were also flights from Oman Air and Kuwait Airsoon to depart.

The lounge agent called out that the Bahrain flight would be delayed by one hour. I knew that this meant I would miss my connecting flight to Dubai in the morning.

At the gate, there was a minor disturbance in the economy queue, but I entered the business class queue and boarded the 787 heading to my chosen seat reserved some months before.

The flight itself was uneventful; it’s not quite long enough to get a decent sleep and I had to remind the crew to bring the bedding. On arrival at Bahrain Airport, I proceeded to the transfers desk where no one was available.

Heading through transit security (which is excellent at this airport) I made my way to the Gulf Air lounge and asked the receptionist for assistance with my onward flight. I had already been rebooked onto the next flight which left in 90 minutes time. I could see from my AirTags that my luggage had arrived in Bahrain and I also asked whether it would make my onward connection.

On arrival at DXB I’m happy to report that both items arrived on the luggage belt. Well done to the airline for their proactive rebooking and well done to the baggage handlers for making this complex manual situation a seamless one for this traveller.