York; Friday, 07 June, 2019

As I was transporting a hefty suitcase and a roller-banner I’d already booked a taxi to get me to city airport weeks in advance, but I was even more thankful as the torrential rain hammered on my office window as I was finishing off work for the day.

The cab slowly meandered its way across South London before finally crawling through the Rotherhithe tunnel and finally picking up some speed as it headed into the Docklands. By the time we arrived at City Airport it had taken nearly 90 minutes, but thankfully this being city I still had plenty of time to check my luggage in before the desks closed.

It turned out I had more than ample enough time as I was still sat in the airport over 2 hours later as the flight had been delayed partly due to the weather and then by the congestion on the apron when it finally did arrive.

Thankfully the delays meant that boarding coincided with a brief lull in the downpours so I was able to get on the plane with only a few spots of drizzle.

The plane was parked virtually at the end of the runway, which meant that from engine start-up to take off was less than 2 minutes, and quite a bit of time regained from the earlier delays. It was an uneventful 40 minute flight up to Manchester, and I though it would be a nice quick arrival, but in the end they decided to park the plane out at a remote stand. The ground crew were clearly having problems as it took them 15 minutes to attach the steps, by which time a full on monsoon was strafing the airfield and in the few yards to get down the steps and to the bus everyone was getting soaked.

It was also pretty clear that the ground crew had been totally focused on the steps for the whole 15 minutes as we still had to wait another 10 minutes in the terminal building for the bags to finally come round.

Thankfully, I was staying in an airport hotel so it was only a matter of calling the hotel to request the shuttle bus and then a quick ride to checkin and my comfy bed for the night.