Helgoland; Monday, 27 July, 2026

The timing of the ferry from Helgoland always meant it wouldn’t be possible to get a flight back on the Sunday evening so I’d booked another half-day’s leave and a mid-morning rather than crack of dawn flight.

That did still mean I had to get up before 07:00 to have breakfast so that I could get out of the hotel and catch the S-Bahn round to the airport.

I had a smooth journey all the way up to the immigration queue where Thursday’s issues were becoming clear. It looks like many people hadn’t been fully checked through EES and the one person manning the non-EU booth was taking about three minutes per person to clear people to exit Germany.

I was still several people from the front of the queue when I heard the first call opening boarding for my flight, and by the time I finally got to the gate British Airways had made it all the way to group 6, though part of that may have been because there were lots of people trapped in the immigration queue.

Despite it being a fully booked flight there appeared to still be quite a few empty seats when the doors closed and we started pushing back 5 minutes early – not certain if that was just abandoning people, or genuine no-shows.

It was a smooth flight, which had a decent tail wind as we had to spend 10 minutes stacking above London before we could start our final approach, but were still five minutes early onto stand after that.

A quick journey through the airport and then a very quick journey back home because it’s so much easier via public transport at lunchtime on a Monday than late evening Sunday.