Wuppertal; Thursday, 21 September, 2023

Another Thursday evening flight from Heathrow and once again I took advantage of my lunch break to head over to an airport hotel to work out of, though in the end it turned out I probably needn’t have bothered as the flight was delayed enough that I would have been able to finish at 5 and get over to the airport with time to spare.

Eventually we pushed back from the gate at Heathrow an hour and a quarter late and proceeded to taxi the entire length of the airport to take off from the Eastern end of the runway. The lengthy taxi and some slightly lumps and bumps along the way meant that we made up no time at all and ended up landing at Düsseldorf still 75 minutes late.

Thankfully our gate was about as close to the runway as possible and within a couple of minutes of the wheels first touching the runway the door was open and we were able to disembark, right into the centre of the terminal and only a short walk from immigration.

It meant that I managed to make, with some ease, the S-Bahn train into the city that left about 25 minutes after we’d first touched the runway, and so about 45 minutes after landing, coupled with my hotel actually being inside Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof, I was in my hotel room and ready to turn in for the night.