Airports - anyone been on a flight lately?

Been in MCR recently for a flight to Italy. Arrived 2.5 hrs early. Queue at check in and queue at security meant we made it to the gate with 10 mins to spare (joined queue at gate, straight on plane.) No pottering around in terminal, no chance to peruse duty free or even get a bite to eat.

Got on plane, pilot announces some bags were missing so we missed our take off slot. Plane delayed 50 mins.

Arrived destination. Off plane, passport check, collect bags, onto transfer bus within 20-30 mins.

Several people due to be on our coach never got their bags, coach left without them.

Recently been through Birmingham, albeit for a flight to Ibiza.
Security was busier than usual but not as bad as I feared, we waited 30 mins to get through I think. Check in was completely pain free.
Air side was loads busier than usual, i suspect as people had all arrived early after reading about delays.
In your shoes I’d be look hard at trains, the faff of flying outweighs the time saved IMO.

Heathrow isn't particularly chaotic at the moment (certainly not to the degree that I've seen in pictures of Manchester / Leeds etc).

similarly have flights Glasgow to Birmingham and back wed and thu next week for work meetings, train times really don't suit. Am hoping that it's not too busy GLW for an 0700 departure midweek, however the chances of the flights being cancelled short notice does seem quite high..

Let the train take the strain mate.

Hope it doesn't get cancelled though.

Perhaps not massively relevant, but I'm just back from a week in Corfu, flying from Luton....

Our flight out was around 7:30am so we were at the airport by 4:30am, expecting it to be nice & quiet. LOL....the queue for check-in was almost out of the door, and that was with the obligatory shuffle backwards and forwards between rows of tapes as you got nearer to the check-in desk.
No idea why, but people on our flight got called out of the queue and whisked through.
Security wasn't too bad but once through there, the queues for something to eat were massive & there was nowhere to sit.

One the way back we arrived to a similarly massive queue at Corfu, but it turned out that was for TUI passengers. For Easyjet, there was a 5min queue and we were through check-in & security in under 15mins. I wouldn't have wanted to be a TUI customer though - there were a lot of unhappy travellers!

We were very lucky, as it looked like some customers had hours of delays and there were some very stressed people who were potentially going to miss their flights.

A lot of it seems to be down to who the flight operator is. At Luton, the Wizzair check-in was virtually empty, while Easyjet were drowning. On the way back, Easyjet was fine but TUI was screwed.

I'd be looking at the train, if it was me.

Birmingham airport a few weeks ago, arrived at 4:30am for a 6am flight and I’ve never seen it so busy in my life. Chaos!

Im thinking train, LNER return Edinburgh to London is cheaper than the flight, but need to get to SW London and if the tube is on strike!

EDI-LHR would be British Airways, EDI-LGW would be EasyJet. 3 hours before flight, then one hour in the air vs 4.5hrs on a train assuming no delays but arrive wrong side of London and have to traverse.

OR Google says 7.5hrs drive from where i live to SW London (all going well)

The flight would be easiest TBH.

Think of the carbon footprint and take the train. Not trying to be holier than thou, but we all have to start factoring this in more.

Heathrow is fine at the moment, if you’re there at the right time. If not, it’s ridiculous.
BA check-in is better than it has been but queues for security can be horrendous depending on time of day.
As you’re flying on a domestic route passport control isn’t an issue but waits of up to 2h for baggage aren’t out of the ordinary in T5 at the moment so I’d advise travelling with hand luggage only if you fly.

been a few times, haven't had too much chaos but I generally travel through security fast lanes or family lanes, both of which skip the worst of the queues. I also didn't fly during the school holiday weekends which are always chaotic even when things are going well (higher %age of travellers who travel less frequently mean things get held up more)

Definitely the train if it works out time wise - much better carbon footprint, it's a really easy trip and I wouldn't be flying now with all the issues if I didn't have to. It might be other airports that are the problem but that might conceivably spill over somehow.

whats Edinburgh to London on the train? 4-5 hours?

train seems a no-brainer even without delays. probably 5x the price though.

Went through LGW 10 days ago; 10am flight with Ryanair, got there at 8, got through without any real issues - 30 minutes from arriving to sitting in departures wondering what to eat.

I'd possibly avoid Easyjet right now given the headlines (might be unfair, but still); but as others said the train could be the way to go.

I'd definitely do train. Even if the tube is on strike there are other options, e.g bus / Uber. Driving would be mental. I recently flew Edinburgh - Milan, Bologna - Heathrow, Gatwick - Edinburgh, all with just hand luggage so no waiting on baggage handlers.

First leg with Ryanair, the security queues were longer than I've ever seen at Edinburgh, though this was 6am and by all accounts they died down a bit later. The flight was fine, departure delayed by half an hour but made up almost all the time en route. Partner flew out a few days later, again long queues, flight delayed by 2/3hrs.

Bologna - Heathrow with BA. This was originally supposed to be Milan - Gatwick but flight was cancelled. This was fine for us though as we were in Bologna anyway but hadn't originally booked to fly back from there as it was ridiculously expensive - cheaper to train to Milan and fly from there, BA were great though and transferred flights. Departure was an hour late due to incoming flight being delayed as a result of no fly/airspace restrictions for the jubilee flyover. No queues though.

Gatwick - Edinburgh with Easyjet. Flight delayed by an hour, no idea why. No queues but was hearing of some issues elsewhere in the airport.

Think of the carbon footprint and take the train. Not trying to be holier than thou, but we all have to start factoring this in more.

I agree.
However for a trip forthcoming - Scotland to Southampton for our staff team of 9.

Train: total cost £238 each and 9 hours travelling, on last day we would stay extra night in hotel to depart on a morning train.

Flight: total cost £132 each and even with extended check-in under 5 hours. Flight home on last day at 6pm means one less hotel night.

That said, I'm proposing this will be our last ever internal flight. Not justifiable in future, we will suck up train costs.

Think of the carbon footprint and take the train. Not trying to be holier than thou, but we all have to start factoring this in more.

This!  Please!  Regardless of the governments insane logic of incentivising internal flights, we really should not be flying within the UK (or much of NW Europe).

@jam-bo LNER its just under £100 return. Thats not peak time trains however. 4.5hr journey time Edinburgh - Kings X or Euston. I need to get to Victoria or Waterloo for onward train

Flew to Munich from Manchester last Sunday and security was 1.5 hours wait! Flew from Munich to Manchester on Friday and security was 5 mins wait.

People have apparently forgotten what a liquid is and what 100ml is over the last couple of years. It was chaos.

We arrived at BHX last week at 1000 for our 1340 flight. Checkin was fine, security was quick.

But we didn’t get airborne til 1945. It was a long day with the kids, and 3am arrival at the hotel was *rubbish*.

Airport was bonkers, full of folk who arrived early (like they’d been told to!) but we’re then delayed.

All that said, Heathrow if pretty much like normal, and it’s the holiday airlines that are cancelling flights.

However: take the train. Really.

I like trains.

Flew out of Bristol. Queues were huge - got to gate after 3+ hours. It was 20min after the stated departure time.

As we were on a chartered Tui flight - the plane was waiting for us and others.

I suspect for a scheduled flight the plane would have taken off.

. I need to get to Victoria or Waterloo for onward train

where's your onwards train too? thameslink go from east croydon to kings x avoiding faffing around with the tube

My boy flew to Ibiza from Manchester airport this morning with 9 mates. Seemed to go all ok. Not sure he care what happens coming home.

@5lab Leatherhead

I was in Prague last week and met a bunch of people flying Easyjet that had had flights cancelled, re-routed r pushed to other days. Some were ending up at Gatwick instead of Luton, or going a day later... It was chaos. A load just took the offered refund and re-booked with BA.

In contrast, my flight to and from Arlanda was fine.

Flew back from CDG to MAN last night. Both airports were running pretty quickly apart from passport control in France. However all bars / restaurants shut at 9pm, but could be a French bank holiday thing.

Flight itself was 90 mins delayed.

Went through Heathrow recently, not as bad as I expected, security and check in was fine (can be busy Friday or Saturday mornings but you'll still get through), coming back on Sunday at 11 am it was actually really quiet and immigration and bags were quick.

If you were more than 14 days out I would be wary of booking domestic routes on BA because they are the first services that get cut right back when they know staffing issues are coming up. But if you are booking a few days ahead you should be good (and would be due compensation if BA pulled the schedule). EasyJet might still be recovering from their last week with a lot of planes and staff in the wrong place and out of hours. But in 7 days I would expect them to be fine and back to normal.

Getting to Leatherhead, personally I would punt on the train, using Thameslink from St Pancras to get across London. You might wait 24 hours to see if the RMT declare strike dates for June (they are meeting today, they have to give 3 days' notice before affected services).

I'm flying to Geneva in a few weeks, I'm hoping the current chaos is at least partly due to it being half-term with a 4 day weekend tagged onto it.

Off to Croatia in August then... I've far less faith about that, middle of the school holidays Bristol to Pula in the middle of the Summer Hols via Easyjet... I don't see it being smooth sailing at all.

Flew out of Bristol on 6.10 am flight Sunday just gone,parked the car in silver zone parking, checked in on line, cabin baggage only and was through security in five minutes.took about half an hour including the bus transfer to get airside.
Felt sorry for the guy in Brunel's bar on his own trying to serve the hen and stag parties.

Heathrow T5 ok at the moment (well, Sunday). Security and bags slow, but not perilously so.

As above, domestic BA/EZY flights can be the first to suffer cancellations.

Try this site to see the recent history of your preferred flights. You’ll see if they are regularly cancelled, which is a great indicator of whether they are likely to be again soon:

www.flightaware.com

How would you plan to travel from Heathrow to Leatherhead? Other than taxi, can’t think of a quick way to do that reliably atm.

For a trip like this I'd take the train every time, not least because it's so much less stressful. In fact I'd probably take the train or drive for most trips in Europe and leave planes for long-haul.

Going through Manchester on Saturday with a 4 year old. Flying TUI.

Dreading it tbh!!

Manchester Terminal 1 short haul:
Utter chaos.
Neighbours just returned from Tenerife lost 2 days in delays from a 10 day holiday.

Manchester Terminal 2 long haul:
'Er indoors has recently returned from Nepal. No issues at all, quick, efficient and hassle free.

Just came through Gatwick, from Oslo on Norwegian. Gate to exit in about 15 mins. No busier than I've seen it before, but I only had hand luggage. HTH!

@andrewreay id have to come into London then back out again by train. Hence Gatwick preferred
@konagirl i'll have a look at Thameslink - just found out Kings Cross and St Pancras are the same 🙂 so yeah, that would do to get the Leatherhead (need to change though from ThamesLink onto Southern)

Have unfortunately been in a few recently, they're all as bad as each other, Massive queues at security as only half the machines manned, e-passport is rubbish never work properly and only 1 or 2 border staff on - don't worry it's not just Britian, france is just as bad Eurostar back from Paris was aweful. However i flew ito Orly and their way t deal with was just to let everyone striaght out of the terminal with no checks (i think it was a mistake and they opened the wrong doors- sending everyone striaght into arrivals lounge)

Flew from Manchester to Majorca last Thursday. 2hr queue for customs, another 50min wait apparently if you’re bag is siphoned off by the X-ray machine so make sure you’ve definitely taken out everything that needs to be for the scanning bit.

Thought it’d be worse tbh, but still got to get back on Saturday!

Flew Edinburgh-Oslo-Tromso two weeks ago. Edinburgh was empty security wise, but then I was travelling mid-afternoon. Departure lounge was pretty busy. OSL was completely dead on arrival, but insanely busy for the redeye up to here in the morning (busier than I ever remember it).

Newcastle-Amsterdam-Bergen last night & newcastle was empty for check-in and security, but departures was absolutely rammed with holidaymakers who all looked like they'd been there for hours. Likewise Amsterdam last night where they appear to have totally run out of staff for everything: passport control, dispatchers, shop staff, burger king burger flippers, all strangely absent.

I think it all depends on what time you're flying. Early morning I'd expect chaos, later in the day then normality,

@dashed we were with TUI at Manchester, I'd think about giving it 3-4 hrs before your flight to make it less of a worry when you're stood in the queue!

We're coming home tomorrow! 😬

Sitting in an airport industrial estate restaurant planning a day out for tomorrow as our (Easyjet) flight from Porto to Bristol tonight has been cancelled. We may or may not be returning to Luton (we live in Cardiff) on Thursday.

The cats can stay in the cattery a bit longer, the car is costing £15 a day to park, my fork and shock which TF Tuned just serviced are going to have to stay with Messrs DPD for a few days. But we're cool.

As it is we were going to visit the kids in London at the weekend, so we may bring that forward a smidge if we can shift the hotel booking. There will be an issue with clean underwear plus I was going to give daughters bike a service but won't have any tools.

If Thursday's flight is cancelled maybe we'll move here.

If we still had patients to treat, students to teach and small kids to keep amused it would be different of course.

Avoid Schipol and KLM if you can, got delayed 2 weeks ago and no baggage .Today missed my Manchester connection from Stavanger and a 5 hr wait for the next flight.

Flew out of Manchester on Thursday. Security queue took just over an hour. I didn't bother with checked baggage, but the check-in desks were queuing out the door.

Was due to fly home from Berlin on Sunday with easyJet, currently in Brussels as my flight was cancelled and no alternative with easyJet until Thursday.

I do think the problems are limited to a couple of airports and airlines. Most flights were leaving on time and we sailed through Berlin and Brussels this evening.

I'd swerve Gatwick & easyJet though, given a choice.

Overall most flights seem to be going, even Easyjet ones. It's just a bit of a bugger if you are unlucky. Anyway, we are hoping we don't get delayed twice. Nice though airport hotels are...

Gatwick to Barcelona and back over the jubilee weekend with easyjet. Zero issues either direction. Arrived 2.5h before mid-morning flight and no queue for security.

No food available on the plane either way, and apparently 1h passport control queue at LHR Monday evening.

flew BA  LHR > ABZ on Sunday no issues at all, swift bag drop and through security with no delays

Definitely train. Tube will almost certainly be fine, even if it's not then one of the Thameslink trains to Sutton stops at Wimbledon, where you can switch to the SWR trains to Leatherhead (Dorking services). In fact that may be easier anyway than navigating the tube.

The people of Leatherhead will not like being told they're in SW London I suspect though 😀

Flew out from LHR to SIN Saturday before last. The M4 spur road was queued up for about 10 minutes to get to the roundabout before the tunnel and apparently on the drive back out it was queued back to the M4 itself. TEast was reasonably busy, certainly the Euro half term package gates were looking fairly spicy but the SIA check was pretty easy and security was only a tiny bit longer than it could've been because I faffed sorting out laptop etc before I got to the scanner and some people ignore all the signage and seem surprised to have to turn everything out of their bags, take belts off etc etc. Arrival in SIN was as good as normal except for the number of Brits who hadn't got their paperwork ready or had multiple persons on single sheets which required a lot of shouting and calling people back 🫣
Currently at the gate at SIN for flight back - been easy so far, hopefully LHR immigration won't be ball achingly painful.

Just about to leave our resort for flight from Verona, bit there's strike action at the airport. Message from TUI that we're all being sent back to resort. No further information.

Threw the last bit of suncream away yesterday!! 🙄☀️

One advantage ( and there are not many) of having a child with Autism is the ability to breeze past the hundreds of people in line to the nice special assistance desk, and through security….
Now just got to keep him amused for the next 2 hours 😀

One advantage

Another advantage, I managed to get a plumber in to do a simple job quickly as he had a afternoon free because the person he was going to see was flying back from Malaga to Bristol rather than to Manchester.

Bristol last Thursday - was fine as a) departed on time at 10am, b) hand luggage only, so only security to deal with.

Departures was something like >30 flights 6am -> 8am, then only a few an hour until the afternoon tranch.

Coming back was delayed a little as EZ needed to call in standby cabin crew from home - I suspect that could have ended up as a cancelled flight very easily.

Flying from Madrid to Newcastle via Heathrow with BA in August. Hope everything sorts itself out by then. Paid the premium over LousyJet / Ryanscare because at least if your flight gets cancelled you get automatically booked onto the next one. Usually do KLM via Schiphol but the cost for that route in August was insane.

BA... because at least if your flight gets cancelled you get automatically booked onto the next one

hah, good one. Our flight to phoenix 2 weeks ago got canned after a 6 hour delay (fault with the plane), everyone was kept at the airport a further two hours, then just told to go and collect their bags then find themselves a hotel, and transport to the hotel, and wait further news (zero assistance from BA). I was rebooked from business down to economy despite business seats still being available (yeah, first world problem, but when you pay £9,000 for a ticket you don't expect to be sat at the back), and most of the other folks didn't get back for another 4 days, as BA made no attempt to book people on other airlines. Absolute shower of ...

Also LOLing at the idea that BA will sort you out. They were worse than useless IME when they stranded me - in the end Qantas sorted it out even after pointing out that it was not their problem (codeshare booked with BA) - if I had waited for BA I would still be wandering about the International Terminal at Heathrow looking for my plane!

In your shoes I’d be look hard at trains, the faff of flying outweighs the time saved IMO.

This...

Even Munich to London by train is only a few hours longer than the total travel time by plane when including the time to get to the airport, check in, security, flight, queue for security, baggage, train/bus into town.

The train takes 9 hours with two easy changes. Main station in Munich is only 10 mins from my door. Couple of hours to Frankfurt, change (same platform), couple of hours to Brussels, change (45 min wait, get food), couple of hours to London.

Total time of flying isn't far off.

An hour to the airport, couple of hours waiting, 2 hour flight, 45 min ride from airport into town.

And no queues with the train!

Still sat at resort. Better than being at the airport but everything's packed up so we are twiddling our thumbs. No option to keep room or be moved elsewhere temporarily. But could be worse. Thank God for the kids club!!

Flight delayed from 11:10 to 23:45. Means getting back home maybe 3am ish. Gonna have to take another days annual leave tomorrow!! Oh dear.

Spoke to another guy for East Midlands flight, his is delayed till 03:45 😱

I've done EDI-LGW return for work twice in the past couple of months without drama.
Junior flew out of EDI to Crete last Thursday with Jet2 and was delayed 3 hours.
We've got Italy via LGW booked for July - out to Rome, back from Alghero. The original LGW-FCO leg was cancelled and has had to be reorganised already.
I'm beginning to question the wisdom of flying this summer - let alone having crazy two leg journeys via London which effectively doubles the risk of disruption or cancellation 🤦‍♂️

Munich is only 10 mins from my door. Couple of hours to Frankfurt, change (same platform), couple of hours to Brussels, change (45 min wait, get food), couple of hours to London.

Did exactly that journey a few years ago with a couple of days stop over in Brussels. Original point of departure was Verona and we came over the Bernauer, (sp) pass on a train pulled by two massive freight engines to manage the gradient. European trains are awesome.

Brother just came back no problem, Tenerife to Manchester, but stupid o'clock arrival at 4am. Very much a lottery.

@tthew

Brenner Pass down to Innsbruck.... Nice journey done many times over the years.

Top tip.... Find the buffet car and keep ordering tidbits and drinks.... 😁

My LHR experience tonight is that immigration is a mess. It took about an hour to queue to get to the eGate.
The upside is that my case was waiting for me in the other side and from there it was about 30 minutes before I was home as the queue for taxis was 1 deep.

Couple of hours to Frankfurt, change (same platform), couple of hours to Brussels, change (45 min wait, get food), couple of hours to London.

See, that’s a great theory, but when we went to Munich it was over 12 hours with the connections.

Maybe it’s because we start our journey in the UK, but the reality is that Kings X / St Pancras is little different from an airport. There are still check-in queues, there is still security and there is still passport control. Plus Eurostar are keen to ensure you arrive early.

So our 07:01 departure to Brussels meant we had to be at KX before 6am, and we didn’t get off the super fast ICE at Munich til after 19:00.

The short walk to the hotel from Munich Hbf was the best bit of the day.

Much as I want it to be different, the reality of UK-Euro train travel is not yet up with the ‘convenience’ of flying for time. And the cost of the pp return train fare was over EUR400 versus £200 for the equivalent flights.

We could fly to Munich in less than six hours door to door. So you lose a full day over the course of a stay.

With a wife and two kids the virtue of the train trip is not something we’d likely repeat soon. We lost a day out of the holiday and were nearly £600 worse off. Highlights how difficult it is to get people to stop travelling by plane.

They keep delaying the introduction of direct UK-Germany rail services too, which would help!

Back at home now.

So flight from Verona was delayed from 11:10 yesterday to 23:45 yesterday. Boarded and took off nearer 01:00 this morning. Some people had been at Verona airport since 0900!

Plane was actually from another airline chartered in by TUI. This was a bonus, more leg room!

Got back to Manchester and the passport control queue was ridiculous. If you have a child under 12, you're syphoned into a separate queue, they had two desks open. Probably a good hour's queue, when everyone else just waltzed through, the knackered kids have to wait!

My LHR experience tonight is that immigration is a mess. It took about an hour to queue to get to the eGate.
The upside is that my case was waiting for me in the other side and from there it was about 30 minutes before I was home as the queue for taxis was 1 deep.

You did well there, 2h+ is pretty normal for T2 immigration lately.
A couple of weeks back people must have been 10 deep trying to get in to the lifts from arrivals to take them down to the ground floor for taxis and busses. It’s been absolutely incredible, both the number of passengers and the lack of organisation around there!

Manchester T2 was a complete flustercuck yesterday. Bag drop no prob - no one at all waiting 3hrs before flight - apparently majority had already checked in!

1hr45mins for security. Queue actively being managed into the shape of snail shell - withe the end in the middle. Genius. Then flight delayed by 4 hrs as no one to put bags in place, refuel etc.

No problems on arrival (Menorca).

Went from manchester to Copenhagen last Wednesday. 10:15 am flight. Arrived manchester airport about 08:00. Had about 20 minutes between coming out of security and final call for boarding.

Manchester’s security layout has always been suboptimal. The small number of staff on Wednesday did a very good job. But even the best will in the world can’t overcome the infrastructure failings.

Coming back from Copenhagen on Saturday on the 08:30 flight was different. I got up early to anticipate a couple of hours of queuing as advised by Danish colleagues. I did though check the airport’s website and they had individualised flight data giving a range of durations of security transit times: 15-17 minutes. Time for breakfast!

Copenhagen also had a less fraught atmosphere and more sensible laning for the security aisles.

Different experiences, but very different times and days.

Surprised at how scruffy Manchester’s air side was compared with Copenhagen. 🙁

From Leeds-Bradford to Malaga yesterday. Advised by travel agent to get there 3 hours before our 06.35 flight so me being me made sure we were there by 02.30. Flying with Bryanair & guess what, baggage drop wasn’t due to open till 04.55!
Anyway it opened at 03.35 but by now the entire population of Leeds were already queuing back to the Jet2 area. But the time we got (slowly but surely) to where we’d started the queue outside was into the car park. After 2 hours in the security line we got through to departure at around 05.30, on the plane by 06.05.
Because of a lack of ground crew the whole plane had to be boarded by the plane’s own single front steps, then some paperwork wasn’t right so we missed our slot.
Finally got off the ground at 07.20.
The fun really started at Malaga trying to find the car hire office, must’ve spent an hour doing laps of the airport but that’s another story.
Probably the worst experience of getting anywhere abroad I’ve ever had, & that includes a 3 flight job to Goa!

I flew from Stansted on Tuesday, back Friday for work. Ryanair said get there 3 hours early so I caught and earlier train.
No problem. Less than half an hour to get through security, all well organise and loads of staff. The departure lounge was hell though. Everyone must have come extra early and there was a queue more than 50 people long to get into Wetherspoons, people sat on the floor by every window etc.
Flights were Ok but full to Sweden.
Return no big issue, probably 15 mins to get through passport control.
Got to go to Brussels in a couple of weeks and definitely going by train if I can. So much less hassle, even from the North of England.

BTW we didn't get cancelled again, so got back two days late. Return journey took 12 hours door to door as we had to get from Luton Airport to Bristol Airport to collect the car and drive home...

Just sent off our claim to Easyjet for the statuary compensation and hotel costs.

I fly from Manchester at 14.05 on Friday to Nairobbery via Dubai. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it. Car park booked for 8am whereas would usually be 11am, just can’t afford (time wise) to get to Nairobi late🙈

Mrsstu was due to fly Brum to Edinburgh last Friday.
Flight was cancelled a few hours before.
She got the train instead.

Yesterday in Glasgow:
5 minutes to drop bags
2 minutes for security queue

Shame that the Loganair plane had technical issues before leaving Southampton to come up, so we were over an hour late boarding.

Flew in to Glasgow from LCY yesterday. No security area issues, ten minutes delay at take off due to technical issue with the plane, bit of a queue to land and maybe ten minutes for the luggage. No real issues at all.

Flying Dublin to LBA Friday, early doors because that's when the flights go. Not looking forward to the usual nonsense.

Sadly family were coming from Switzerland to London yesterday by train, and it's no better. DB were an hour late, causing a cascade of missed connections and the ridiculous situation of changing in Paris to get to Brussels to catch the Eurostar... Total travel time was probably around 12 hours

I went to a conference in Amsterdam last Monday from LGW to Schiphol. We'd cleared security and were having breakfast when they cancelled our flight. thankfully I was hand luggage only and managed to book with the Orange guys for later that day. No explanation given by BA (and I know the plane was on the stand as my mate works at the airport). Also they gave us no alternative on that day - only offering their corresponding plane on the following morning.

I had to get from south to north terminal for the new flight. It Took 2 hours as there were no BA employees to escort us out of the airport. Apparently it has to be an employee from the airline. And there was nobody manning the help desk, and the phones just rang and rang. I was more blasé as it was business travel but was still a very poor state of affairs.

Easyjet flight did leave - after announcing a couple of hour delay, that actually decreased to about 30 mins. Anyway - door to door it took me 12 hours for an hour's hop.

Queues for all the eateries at Gatwick were unreal. No exaggeration to say 50m snaking around the building to get into Pret and the other places. North terminal was still busy but nowhere near as bad as the south. Never seen anything like it. In fairness the queues moved ok.

On the way back Schiphol was very hit and miss. We got through security in about 20 mins. People 30 mins after us took two hours. And then airside 80% of bars and restaurants are shut - everyone queueing at the few remaining open places.

Absolute chaos in Dublin. No staff apparently

Flying to Stansted on friday, dreading passeport control as Wife and Kids have british passeport, but mine is french. I guess they Will have to wait for me.

Bristol/Belfast/Bristol has been fine the last few times. A few flights around mine have been canceled so not holding my breath.
Dublin next month, so a tad worried about that one, they finish a strike a few days before....

Flying to Barcelona from Stansted next Thursday. My problem will be the Stansted express due the the planned rail strikes.

I’ve just booked parking as well which can be cancelled up to an hour before arrival so I have a back up although roads will be busy.