Delft; Thursday, 03 August, 2023

As my flight had moved earlier in the evening that originally booked, I had to head over to the airport on my lunch break and work out of a hotel room for the afternoon before heading round to Terminal 5 to check in.

Both the plane and the crew had been delayed on different earlier flights, so we didn’t start boarding until after the original departure time, and by the time we started the long taxi down the length of the airfield at Heathrow we were 40 minutes late.

I thought it would be unlikely that we’d make up much time, given we were also due to land on the Polderbaan at Schiphol, the runway that’s a 20 or so minute taxi from the terminal building.

However, as we started the final approach to the airport the captain happily informed us that there had been a change of runway and instead, we would be landing on the runway that ended right by where our stand would be at Schiphol, immediately wiping 20 minutes off our travelling time.

The journey through Schiphol looked like it could end up being quite long as screens in the main departures lounge were showing 20–25-minute wait times for immigration, but as we got to the end of the long queue, we got redirected round to another set of immigration desks and were processed and through in under 5 minutes.

A quick hop one stop on the train to Hoofddorp and then a short walk and I was at my hotel for the night and a well-deserved sleep.