I read my mate John Lyle’s blog when I got back to the UK about his experiences of air travel – notably BMI and RyanAir. You can read his comments here.

They have ways of conveying bad news!

I had to wait until I got back to the UK, as WordPress (who rather excellently host this blog) are not flavour of the month in China. I couldn’t actually see my blog, but had a work-around to post submissions. It was frustrating at times – but I got there in the end!

Anyway back to the current subject – flying.

I flew to China with Virgin Atlantic, who I have generally found to be excellent. But my flight back was a bit of a trial. When I arrived at the airport they told me there was a thirty minute delay – which was due to the late arrival on the inbound aircraft. Sure enough we were all loaded on board – at which point the Captain gave us the good news and bad. Good – everyone was on board with their ‘stuff’. Bad – we were in the queue to leave – behind the plane at the side of us. He had been there for two hours. It was busy and I assume it had come as a surprise to Air Traffic Control that all these planes had gatecrashed the airport?

I knew it was bad when they put the films on – and then started cooking!

I was half way through Bad Lieutenant (which was rubbish) when the announcement came that we had a slot – 2 hours after our original. So that was good news.

Then more bad news. A lady had decided not to fly – she was unwell. So she was de-planed. With her luggage. This cost us our slot.

Eventually we took off – and faced some interesting weather. The storms were quite spectacular over northern China. We wriggled our way around them as best we could!

I landed at Heathrow 14 hours 35 minutes after I first sat in my seat! The flight time was 11 hours 46 minutes…

There is an inevitability about delays when you fly; and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s called powerlessness…