Ba 8718 lcy-edi
 

Bit of a fiasco here at LCY this evening.

- Plane has been showing an hour’s delay from 2005 to 2100 all day.
- At check-in they say it might be 2140.
- At 1935 the boards start showing a gate and say “boarding soon”
- At 2015 a plane arrives at the gate, but there are no staff here for boarding.
- At 2030, the staff member who has arrived reports that the gate information is wrong, the plane’s have been switched and ours is coming in from Zurich and will indeed be leaving at 2140. Cue grumbling as of course all the shops have closed in the meantime.
- At 2050 the gate assignment disappears and the plane is now showing as leaving at 2225.

All very annoying, particularly as our original plane has been sitting on the tarmac for a while. All the shops are closed and it is now impossible to buy anything to eat or drink except booze. Not even water by the looks of things. No one from BA has offered us anything.

Annoying! If your plane is indeed coming from Zurich, that is not due to arrive on stand until 10pm, so I would think a 25min turn around won’t be possible. I’d hazard a guess you depart the stand around 10.40pm I’m afraid.

Pilot37

Thanks @Pilot37. Better to know than not know!

Interesting to me how much less eggy people are at the delay than they normally are. A certain fatalism in the air at the moment.

Isn't a post 10pm departure banned at LCY? Same way a 1231 eta on a Saturday will see a divert?

No the curfew is 2230. There will be lots of stsff frantically ensuring departure before then to avoid cancellation.

https://www.londoncityairport.com/co...20on%20Sundays

Well, if that is the case, given it is 2140 and we are all sitting here without a gate in sight, I would have hoped someone would have told us by now!

Your aircraft is on final approach into LCY now so you should be allocated a gate pretty soon.

Indeed, we have a gate and the plane has arrived. Hopefully we have LCY’s equivalent to an F1 team to get us up in the air before the curfew.

Adds a frisson of excitement, doesn’t it?

Edit: staff at the gate say we’ve got to be moving on the runway by 2227. Looking down at the number of staff, she’s told me “it’s all hands on deck”.

Definitely! Im sure everyone on the board right now is rooting and a tooting for you to get on that flight! :tu:

Now on the plane. Probably a good thing they’ve not made an announcement to get people to shift, but Christ on a bike they are cutting it tight.

By my rough reckoning it was 8 minutes from the first passenger getting on the steps to the “doors to automatic” announcement from the captain.

And we are moving!

Woo-hoo!