Kalmar; Wednesday, 20 July, 2022

Just before I set off from home I’d checked and everything was running fine. I checked again about 5 minutes out from Heathrow and my flight was still on time, so it was with a bit of a surprise I was greeted with the news that my flight had an over 2-hour delay when I checked my bags in.

The original departure time came and went, but our departure time remained fixed with the same delay. Eventually just 40 minutes before our revised departure time they finally gave us a gate, which turned out to be the bus gate – thus insuring there would be no way we would make that revised departure time.

With delays getting buses, and a group of passengers who had to be offloaded as they had inadvertently managed to cancel their bookings after checking in (I wouldn’t have thought that would be possible), we finally pushed back off of the gate 3 hours behind schedule and chasing down the time before Heathrow closes for the night due to noise restrictions.

We made it out, probably the last flight on the night to depart and made our way over to Copenhagen. On the way the pilots managed to make up a little bit of time, crucially for British Airways – enough to bring the flight in under the 3 hours delay mark that would have resulted in yet more compensation claims.

The journey through Copenhagen Airport was surprisingly smooth for 2:30 in the morning, but then we hit the baggage arrival hall which looked like carnage. There were lots of people standing around the two belts that were working and the rest of the hall was stacked high with unclaimed (or unflown) luggage. It was pretty obvious that there might be a delay in getting bags, and that turned out to be true as it was nearly 3:30 before I finally had my bag and was through customs.

Thankfully, I’d made the bright decision of booking a hotel at Copenhagen Airport (my original plan I’d booked the night in Malmo, but then decided as there were only hourly trains overnight that could have gone horribly wrong) so it was only a five minute walk from the exit of the airport to the hotel check-in and then only a few minutes later my head hitting the pillows in my room.