The story behind this trip is quite a long one, going back many years, so I’ll try to keep it short. Since I was a small boy, I have been fascinated by extreme, remote places. My parents and grandparents told me stories of how at extreme latitudes, it is light for 24 hours in summer and dark for 24 hours in winter. I read tales of such places having multicoloured lights streaking across the sky, something I always found incredible. When I was very young, the Northern Lights made their way as far south as the UK, and I remember Mum showing them to me one night and how I cried with fear as I’d never seen anything like it.

When I was a little older, I watched a TV programme about a place called “Tromso”, apparently the northernmost city in the world. I made it a dream of mine to visit this place one day, if only to say “I’ve been there”.

 

Fast-forward to October 2008. My wife’s dream has always been to see the Northern Lights, and we have enough airmiles sitting in our Krisflyer account for a return trip to somewhere else in Europe. The question was where to go. We wanted to get our money’s worth out of this trip, so places such as Spain, France, Germany etc were out of the question as we could get there cheaply any day using Ryanair or easyJet. Looking at a map, we realised we could fulfil a dream and go to Tromso. Thinking that would be impossible, I rang SQ on the offchance, and was told that there was no problem using our miles to travel there. There was no limit to the number of connections we could use either.

 

With no hesitation, we booked time off work and got the flights booked. I used some travel industry contacts to eventually secure a hotel room for 450 NOK per night for a 4 star hotel (every other hotel in the city wanted at least 1000 NOK per night, including this one). We booked a car and prepared for our trip.

 

The itinerary was as follows:

 

Friday, 5 December 2008: MAN-OSL-TOS (SK)

Monday, 8 December 2008: TOS-OSL-LHR-MAN (SK/BD).

 

The return leg we couldn’t get a direct flight OSL-MAN as the morning flight would have already left OSL before the first flight from TOS gets in.

I managed to check in online at flysas.com the day before our flight, after calling SAS to get our SAS PNR.

 

We set off for Manchester at 8am, making the standard journey across the Peak District to Stockport, then across to MAN. The parking was the first issue – we arrived at 10:00 in plenty of time for an 11:30 departure – we only had to drop our suitcase off 40 mins before in any case. We were sent to a different car park, and then had to wait 20 minutes for a bus to collect us. We finally arrived at the station in MAN at 10:45, with the bag drop in Terminal 1 closing at 10:50. We ran the length of the airport to the bag drop, where there was no queue at all. The kind lady marked our boarding passes with “Fast Track” stickers to get us through security a bit quicker. I asked about the load for the flight today, she said 98 passengers approximately, but they’d not all checked in. We then went to security, and we needn’t have worried about the fast track, as we walked straight up to a desk in any case.

 

We both set off the alarms and needed patting down, shoes off and everything else. We cleared security and headed for the gate where our ride to Oslo was waiting.

 

 

 

Boarding commenced at 11:10, and we made our way down the airbridge to the waiting aircraft.

 

Date	5 December 2008
Airline	Scandinavian Airlines
Flight Number	SK4608
From	Manchester (MAN)
To	Oslo Gardemoen (OSL)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-700
Registration	LN-RPJ
STD/ATD	11:30 / 11:35
STA/ATA	14:25 / 14:33
Flight Time	1:57

 

 

We collected a complimentary copy of the Daily Mail on the way down to the aircraft, and were greeted by the purser as we boarded the aircraft. We had a quick glance into the flight deck, where the captain was busy reading a Norwegian newspaper.

 

On arriving at our row, we found it was pointless booking a window seat as row 7 has no window :-( We know for next time now!

The captain came over the PA in Norwegian talking for about 5 minutes, then in English said “Welcome aboard, flight time to Oslo approximately 1:35”. The purser then came on and welcomed us aboard, then did the safety briefing while we were at the gate. Mrs G had the “window” seat for this leg, so I handed her the camcorder. We could at least partly see out of the window in front, well until the guy put his seat right back in any case.

 

We pushed back and taxied out to runway 23L, before commencing our takeoff roll.

 

     

(Video by Mrs G :-))

 

We made a right turn after takeoff, headed towards Newcastle. The crew came round selling food and drink, we bought a sandwich meal each (sandwich, coffee and Diet Coke) for 600 NOK (approx GBP 6/USD 12). That was very nice, and we got free topups on the coffee throughout the flight.

 

The cabin crew looked very smart, in retro uniforms. The aircraft was also very clean, and again was almost retro with the old fashioned 1950s style exit signs.

Somewhere over the North Sea, the captain came on and announced that we were at a cruising altitude of FL390, and would be arriving into Oslo on time. The weather in Oslo was currently snowing, with a temperature of -2 Celsius.

 

We carried on, with nothing but cloud below for the entire journey, and eventually heard the engines slow down and we started our descent. We descended into cloud, when the captain came on and announced that there was heavy traffic in Oslo and we had to hold for 7-8 minutes. We then had to hold in the cloud for about 10 minutes, before commencing our final approach into Oslo.

 

I was unable to video the landing thanks to the guy in front with his seat right back, but we emerged from the clouds at a pretty low altitude, to see a snow covered Norway with little log cabins and pine trees covered in snow. We touched down at a snow covered Oslo, and taxied off the runway. It was blowing a blizzard, and there were fleets of snow ploughs going up and down the taxiways clearing the snow. As quick as they cleared it, it was snowed under again, and they went back the other way. We pulled onto the gate and walked up the airbridge into the terminal.

 

We headed for the baggage reclaim to collect our bag, before checking it in again. The bag eventually emerged, covered in snow. Had they dragged it along the taxiway? :-)

We emerged into arrivals, and walked through to the SAS bag drop to drop the bag off. The lady asked if I wanted to use my fingerprint instead of the boarding card. What the hell I thought, and I scanned my finger onto the machine. We went through security again, and yet again I set off the scanner. Once more the shoes came off, and eventually we were on our way. We headed for a cafe to grab a bite to eat, and paid 1750 NOK (£17.50 or USD 30) for two baguettes and two Pepsis!

 

The screen showed our flight as going from gate 26, so we headed there. Once we got there the screen showed a delay of 15 minutes to 16:35, and then a gate change to 23. We headed that way, and noticed another screen showing gate 24, so we went back there. By this time we were getting a little fed up, and I then noticed it had changed yet again, to gate 19. Three gate changes in 10 minutes! It didn’t change from 19 though, but the delay did get longer. The crew all arrived and an announcement was made of a further delay to 16:45, due to late arrival of the incoming aircraft.

 

While we were waiting, we marvelled at the efficiency of the Norwegians. While the UK would come to a standstill at the slightest flurry of snow, here they were just getting on with it. There were several inches of snow on the ground and a blizzard that lasted all afternoon while we were there, yet there were only three delayed flights (ours being one of them). Snow ploughs cleared the snow to one side, followed by machines to suck up the snow and blow it back out into dumper trucks. The snow ploughs plied the taxiways and runways constantly, never stopping.

 

Eventually we saw a SAS 737 pull onto the stand, at 16:15. We started boarding at 16:30, and I went to the fingerprint line. My fingerprint worked, and printed off a little receipt with my name and seat number on it. Neat! Mrs G still had her boarding pass so went the other way, so we got split up. At the bottom of the airbridge I waited for her, and eventually she arrived and we boarded.

 

 

Date	5 December 2008
Airline	Scandinavian Airlines
Flight Number	SK4424
From	Oslo Gardemoen (OSL)
To	Tromsø (TOS)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-800
Registration	LN-RRT
STD/ATD	16:20 / 16:48
STA/ATA	18:10 / 18:39
Flight Time	1:51

 

 

We boarded and were met by a very tall gentleman in a uniform, who turned out to be the purser. We made our way to the seat which thankfully had a window this time.

 

The safety announcement was made in Norwegian only, but we got the gist when she was pretending to blow on her whistle and pulling the tags :-) There was only one other English couple of the flight after all.

We pushed back, and as we taxied out, saw an FR 737 parked on a remote stand. I could only imagine it had diverted in from TRF due to the snow.

The wings were still covered in snow, but as we taxied out we pulled into the de-icing bay to get de-iced.

 

Video of us getting de-iced:

   

 

The captain came on to say that we were waiting for 3-4 minutes here to clear the snow from the wings, and the truck came over and sprayed us down. A very efficient operation I must say, taxi in, get de-iced, then taxi out!

We then made our way to runway 01L, lined up and commenced our takeoff roll. We climbed out to the north, straight into the snow filled clouds, and off on our way to the Arctic.

 

   

 

The flight was pretty boring to start with, the cloud soon cleared and we got a good view of Trondheim in the distance. The captain came on to announce we were at a cruising altitude of FL350, and that the weather in Tromso was currently clear skies with a temperature of -7 Celsius.

 

Once we passed Trondheim, I started looking out of the window, with my arm covering the reflection from the lights in the aircraft. At one point the wing was illuminated green for several seconds, before clearing. A little later, on the horizon, a band of green went from one side of the sky to the other, from east-west. As we got closer over the next hour, the green lights faded away and came back again, several times. By the time we reached Bodo it was two strips of green, very bright in the night sky, and moving along the edges. The moment was amazing, although only a few minutes long, but just made me sit back and think “wow”. Hopefully we would see them again on the ground over the course of the weekend.

 

We reached the Harstad area and commenced our descent down to Tromso. The purser announced that passengers connecting to a Wideroe flight from Tromso needn’t worry about our delay, as that flight was waiting for them on the ground.

As we commenced our final approach, we could see the island of Kvaløya off to the left of the aircraft as we flew a straight in approach to runway 01. Before we knew it the Kvaløyvegen road flashed by underneath and we touched down on a very slippy runway 01. Full reverse thrust was applied, and it took some time to come to a halt. We taxied off to the left, and past the Wideroe hangars to the ramp.

 

We disembarked through an airbridge and waited a few moments to collect our baggage. The terminal at Tromso is pretty small but serves well the incoming flights it handles each day, one of Tromso’s only connections with the outside world (the alternative is a 2 day boat ride from Bergen).

 

We headed to the Budget car hire kiosk to collect the keys for our car, before making our way outside. On stepping outside the cold really hits you - -7 celsius isn’t that cold by Tromso standards but it was certainly plenty cold enough for us. The snow was drifted everywhere and we struggled to find the path to our car! When we eventually found it, it was a Toyota Auris. It was also frozen solid all the way around (and it looked like somebody had cleared it!). The doors were frozen shut and when we opened up there was ice on the inside of the windows! We fired her up and programmed the Satnav to take us to our hotel, the Clarion Collection With (pronounced “Veet”) in downtown Tromso.

 

<b>Our weekend in Northern Norway</b>

 

The journey to the hotel was certainly an interesting one, driving on the wrong side of the road, at night, and with heavy snow cover everywhere. No road markings were visible, and we hadn’t got a clue who to let go at crossroads. We bumbled our way through a tunnel to the centre of Tromso, then tried to find the hotel. We ended up going up a bus/taxi only road both ways, only realising after the second pass through! We were relieved when we arrived at the hotel, but that relief was short lived when we were told we had to park in a car park in a cave (yes a cave) 500 metres away. Again we struggled, traffic lights didn’t change from red (and we had an irate pizza delivery driver honking us to get us to go through on red),

 

We finally parked up and walked past the world’s northernmost Burger King back to our hotel.

 

The following day was Saturday. We woke up in total darkness thinking it was still early, and only then realised it was 9.30am! We went down for breakfast and had a bite to eat.

 

The plan was to drive inland a little to see some of the scenery, and then during the evening drive back, hopefully getting a glimpse of the Aurora on the way.

 

We walked to collect the car, and headed out of Tromso along the Tromso Bridge to the mainland. We drove south alongside beautiful fjords towards the border with Finland. The roads were covered in snow, but weirdly were not slippy at all. As we drove, we listened to the Norwegian Classic Rock CD that somebody had kindly left in the car (for reasons realised after listening to it).

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a couple of hours we had reached the border with Finland, marked with a simple EU border sign showing Finland in Finnish, Swedish and Sami. We drove inside Finland for a few kilometres, stopping to take some photos.

 

 

 

The temperature had dropped at this point to -21 celsius, which was pretty cold. I felt my hands sticking to my tripod with the cold, 5 minutes in this temperature was enough to chill me right through, even though I was wrapped up well with hat and gloves. A car stopped in the opposite direction, and a lady got out and started speaking to us in Norwegian. The blank look I returned was the cue for her to speak English, and she had stopped to point out the snowmobiles herding reindeer on the hillside. They were bringing them back down the mountain and must have been hundreds of reindeer in one huge pack.

 

 

 

 

We said goodbye and continued to drive towards Kilpisjarvi, the first village in Finland. Just short of the village was a border customs post, we decided to do a U turn here and head back to Norway. At least we could say we’d been to Finland.

 

We drove back across the border into Norway, marked only by a snow-covered sign saying “Norge”. The roads around this part of the world really are amazing. Empty save for the odd car coming the other way, long, winding bends and beautiful, snow covered Arctic tundra making way for rocky, snow covered mountains. Every now and then we cross a fjord on a curved bridge, taking in the amazing scenery. It was not totally dark, more like a constant twilight from 10:30am through to about 2pm.

 

By this time it was around 2pm and already getting very dark. We headed back to Skibotn to grab a drink and a bite to eat from a “Joker” supermarket, then got back on the road towards Storfjord. We started seeing signs for the “Nordlysvegen / Northern Lights Route”, with stopping places indicated 1km in advance. We pulled in at one just short of Storfjord, which consisted of some toilets, a viewing hut, a sauna (!) and the most amazing view across the lake. Well at least it would have been had it been light, but it was a very clear night and the moon illuminated the lake nicely to get some good photos.

 

We waited for around an hour here to see if we could catch the Northern Lights, but to no avail. We got back on the road and headed further north, taking a turning off the main road at one point up into the mountains. The sky looked beautiful from up here, a crystal clear night with absolutely no light pollution meant we could see more stars than ever before.

 

 

After a further hour it was 5pm, and still a little early to see the Aurora. We got back on the main road and headed further north, pulling off down a dark lane alongside a lake to the village of Svartnes to get some photos of the moon reflecting on the lake. We found a small car park down here, and started by taking a couple of photos of the lake.

 

 

I got back in the car, and after a few minutes Mrs G said “I’m sure I can see a green hue between those two mountains”. “Nah” I said, “It must be your eyes playing tricks”. “Take a photo” she said. I did.

 

 

“I told you so” she said (her favourite phrase). The sky got ever greener, before we could see a band of green stretching from east to west, north of us.

 

 

 

At this point I was stood outside the car, in temperatures of -16 celsius now, absolutely freezing. Somehow I didn’t feel the cold however, and I just stood taking shot after shot as we stood and marvelled at what we saw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The band of green moved slowly towards us, over about 5 minutes. Suddenly, and without any warning, the lights “fell” from the sky into deep curtains of light.   They rippled across the sky, dancing from one side to the other, splitting up, joining together again. We stood there, mesmerised by the beauty. It was eerily quiet, despite seeing these lights flying around the sky, the silence made the sight even more amazing. Every now and then we heard some animals in the distance, probably cattle or reindeer. They might have been as mesmerised as us, or they could just be fed up of seeing this every night during the winter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the lights faded away, and as quickly as they appeared they had disappeared again. If this was the only time in our lives we saw the Northern Lights, we would be happy.

We got back in the car and drove back up to Tromso, which took about 30 minutes.

 

The following day, we visited Polaria, an interactive museum mostly about the environment of this part of the world. There was a cool 180 degree screen movie about Svalbard, and lots of aquariums showing underwater life in the Arctic. Then we went to watch the bearded seals being trained and fed, which was pretty cool.

 

In the evening we were collected from our hotel for our sleigh ride through the snow. We were taken by our host 12km south of the city onto the mainland to a remote farm right on the coast. Here we met Erik, who has lived around here all his life, on the family farm passed through three generations.

 

We boarded the sleigh and were first taken around the farm, before getting on the road and heading north for a couple of kilometres, then back to the farm again. We were then taken out the traditional Sami lavvu in the field at the back, where there was a lovely warm fire burning. Erik had made us delicious fresh fish soup, made from Atlantic Salmon caught in the lake and vegetables grown on the farm. To follow we had some homemade cinnamon cake and a nice cup of coffee. We sat around the fire listening to the history of the local area, and hearing many tales. Erik kept looking outside for the Northern Lights, but it was very cloudy. Eventually the cloud cleared a little and we went outside and got a very brief glimpse between the clouds. We soon headed back to the warmth of the lavvu.

 

 

 

 

Finally, we were taken to the 100 year old traditional Norwegian barn, where we met the horses. They have Icelandic and Norwegian horses, the oldest being some 29 years old!

Eventually we were taken back to Tromso by Erik and dropped back at the hotel in time for a nice mug of chocolate and an early night, for our early start to the journey home the following day.

 

The following morning it was time to set off for home again. We left the hotel at 8am and made our way through the tunnels back to the airport.

 

We filled up with diesel and dropped the car back, before going into the small, modern terminal. We had to go to the bag drop as we had checked in online, but were not able to get our boarding cards for the BMI sector LHR-MAN. We were a little worried as the agent did not have any booking showing from LHR-MAN, and we did definitely not want to be stuck in London!

 

She advised us we would need to speak to BMI in London about this flight, but she said there were seats still on the flight if it wasn’t booked.

 

Worried by this early set back, we continued through security to the gate area. Setting off the machines again we both got scanned, and proceeded through to airside. It was still dark outside and I grabbed a couple of photos. We watched a Wideroe Dash 8 come in surrounded by fire engines and pulled up at the gate, where the passengers disembarked as usual, so not sure what was happening there.

 

While we were waiting the board changed and said there was a delay to 10:40. There were also a number of delays to southbound flights, including a DY flight to OSL. That was announced as a delay due to bad weather conditions and heavy snow in OSL.

After a while a SK 737 landed from Bodo, followed shortly after by another SK 737 which would be our ride to OSL this morning. The aircraft pulled onto stand and the passengers disembarked. Soon after that boarding was opened and we made our way along the airbridge to the waiting aircraft.

 

Date	8 December 2008
Airline	Scandinavian Airlines
Flight Number	SK4411
From	Tromsø (TOS)
To	Oslo Gardemoen (OSL)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-500
Registration	LN-BUC
STD/ATD	10:15 / 10:46
STA/ATA	12:05 / 12:39
Flight Time	1:53

 

Once on board, it was clear that the crew were in a hurry, as they were rushing up and down the cabin doing their checks. They were also rushing people to seats, and before too long we were all seated and we were ready to go.

 

We had bagged seats on the exit row for this flight, which did not come with more legroom on the -500, but the seat I had was 9B which was a space away from the window. It felt more spacious with no seat there, and there was only us two on this row.

 

The safety demonstration was again done in Norwegian only, as we pushed away from the stand 31 minutes late. On the way to the runway a flight attendant came past and asked in Norwegian if we were OK with operating the emergency exit. Even though I don’t speak Norwegian I understood what he was saying, and then he pointed to the camera around my neck and said something including the word “kamera” so I handed it to him and he put it in the overhead locker.

 

We made our way out to the southerly runway (the aircraft had landed on the northerly, presumably with the light winds this was saving time flying around the island) and taxied down the runway to backtrack for departure. We didn’t even pause, it was literally turn around, full power and we were on our way to Oslo.

 

We climbed out and got a nice view of the city, with many landmarks visible now including the Tromso bridge and Arctic Cathedral to the south of the city, before we took a slight left turn on track for Oslo. Once through the clouds it was a little brighter.

 

The purser came on to apologise for the delay, which was due to the aircraft being delayed inbound to Oslo due to the weather, which had pushed them back for our flight. By way of an apology she said they would be offering free tea and coffee on the flight today.

 

About 20 minutes into the flight at 11:05, the sun started to appear, and soon filled the cabin with light, the first time it had been visible in three days. Before too long at all it was high in the sky. I passed the time reading some articles in the “Scanorama” magazine, before they came round with drinks. We both took a coffee.

 

The captain came on and announced we were at our cruising altitude, and that the weather in Oslo was snow showers with temperatures of -1 celsius. We were expecting an arrival in Oslo of around about 12:45.

 

The cloud cover persisted all the way south, and we passed several aircraft heading northbound. We soon felt the aircraft throttle back and the start of the descent.

We entered the clouds, where we remained for a little while, before hearing the landing gear go down. We broke out of the cloud at probably around 3000 feet, seeing snow covered pine forests and little chalets below us.

 

Landing video (note how far from the window :-()

 

 

 

We continued down the approach path and touched down at 12:35. It was not snowing at this time, although the snow ploughs continued to ply the taxiways and runways. I wondered if they were still the same drivers we saw on the way down, if they had just got lost and continued to drive up and down the runway aimlessly :-)

 

We pulled onto stand and made our way off the aircraft, the captain and purser were at the front doors thanking us as we deplaned.

 

Our aircraft on the ground at OSL:

 

The next stop we thought was to a SAS information desk to see if we were actually booked on the BMI flight LHR-MAN. We found one and queued for a little while (even though we were number 3 in the queue), until eventually another desk opened up. The lady spoke English and was very pleasant. She struggled to find the booking too, and looked like she checked a couple of systems. She said she was struggling and we may need to check in again at LHR. I really didn’t want to do this but if it was the only option we’d have to.

 

After a couple of minutes frantically typing away she stuck her thumb up, to which a sigh of relief was in order. She said the flight from LHR-MAN was full and we had been allocated 5E for Mrs G and 24F for me –opposite ends of the plane! She said she could shift a passenger from row 23 and put her in front of me, we said anything was fine as it was only a short flight, and anything to get us on the aircraft!

 

I asked if it was a different reference and she said yes, it was BMI’s number which was different to SAS’s. We took the boarding passes and made our way to the international departure gates. On the way we saw we’d been allocated seats 24E and 24F in any case, so she must have been able to do it.

 

We passed through passport control to the non-Schengen area at the end of the terminal.

We sat down at the gate area where no aircraft was there. Understandable as it was about an hour before departure at this point. I went to take a couple of photos.

 

There was a Thomas Cook A330 at the gate headed for Phuket. It took them ages to get everyone boarded, and people were filing out of bars and duty free even as the final call was being made. It almost reminded me of a flight from Glasgow to Magaluf :-)

 

The flight was already very late yet the passengers were just strolling down from the bars without a care in the world. As I walked back towards our gate, a man was crawling around on the floor screaming and shouting like a baby. This was clearly disturbing to a few people, and it wasn’t long before two armed security guards shut him up! :-)

 

I took some photographs from the gate area.

 

 

 

 

 

I started to walk back to the gate, and took a few more photos from the gate area. As we waited, the Thomas Cook aircraft went out to the runway, only to return to the gate again 20 minutes later, making it even later!

 

Meanwhile the gate area was filling up, and even the crew had arrived, but still no aircraft. Eventually, an aircraft was towed round by a tug to the gate. The gate agent announced that our aircraft had gone tech somewhere else, and they had to wait for this aircraft which had just finished a maintenance check. The delay was while they waited for somebody to sign off the maintenance work, then it had to be towed round.

The crew boarded first, then a few minutes later we followed.

 

 

Date	8 December 2008
Airline	Scandinavian Airlines
Flight Number	SK809
From	Oslo Gardemoen (OSL)
To	London Heathrow (LHR)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-700
Registration	LN-TUD
STD/ATD	15:05 / 15:08
STA/ATA	16:25 / 16:11
Flight Time	1:54

 

 

We were greeted by the purser as we boarded the aircraft, and made our way to our seats. We were right at the back of the wing which was quite nice. Most of the flight was business class and Economy Extra, only rows 14 and above were economy on this flight.

The plane was about 3/4 full today, however we had a row to ourselves so could spread out a little.

 

The safety demo was done in Norwegian and English this time. The captain came on to welcome us aboard, he sounded a very jolly chap indeed. We soon pushed back and taxied out to the runway, behind the Thomas Cook A330 that still had not left! He went first and we followed him out to the runway.

 

Video of take off:

 

 

We powered up and headed off down the runway, getting a good view of the terminal as we lifted off and straight into the cloud. About 10 minutes into the flight the cloud broke up and we were overhead Oslo city.

 

We were treated to stunning views of the mountains and fjords of southern Norway for the first half hour of the flight, before we coasted our over Kristiansand. The crew came around selling drinks again, we abstained.

 

About an hour in the captain came on to announce we were cruising at FL400. Amazing how high these NGs cruise! We would be arriving into London on the westerly runway around 16:05, about 20 minutes early. The weather in London is fair with temperatures of 6 celsius. The flight was expected to be smooth the entire journey into London.

We continued over the North Sea, for what seemed like an eternity. We passed a couple of aircraft going the other way, this must be quite a busy route out of the UK. The cloud gradually climbed to the point that we were at cruise level, in cloud!

 

We started our descent about 30 minutes before arrival. This is where the fun began – it was very bumpy on the way down through the thick cloud. We eventually emerged from the pea soup to the south of Felixstowe, and we followed the coast around towards Clacton. We saw the infamous country of “Sealand” down below, with the flag flying high!

We hit cloud again and emerged in a right turn, with Canary Wharf and the city of London right below us. The seatbelt sign came on, and we started our approach along the south of the River Thames. We got a good view of parliament and Buckingham Palace, as well as the London Eye. We then continued on our approach over West London, amazed that most roads down here were jammed solid.

 

Video of our approach and landing:

 

 

We then passed over Hatton Cross and the famous Myrtle Avenue before touching down smoothly on runway 27L. We could see the BA777 involved in the accident earlier this year with no markings on, stored in the BA maintenance area.

 

We pulled off at high speed to let one land behind us, and made our way to Terminal 3. We passed an SQ 744 and pulled in next to an SK A321.

 

We deplaned the aircraft into England’s asshole and took a deep breath, before getting started on our navigation of LHR.

 

We followed the signs for connections, which led us down some stairs and to a bus stop. We had to board a bus, which would take us around to Terminal 1. We pulled away and a TV programme started (we called it “Paranoia TV”). “If you see a suspicious package, then do this. We are on high alert for terrorist activity” etc etc. It went through the entire process of how we have nothing to fear, all the procedures we have to follow. I was far more interested in looking out of the window, as we drove airside underneath all the gates past 747s and A340s at close range. They look so huge from this level!

 

Finally, we arrived at Terminal 1, where the fun begins. After getting off the bus we had to have photos taken, fingerprint scans, rectal scans (OK just kidding about that one). We then had to go through the grandly titled “UK Border Patrol”, which I imagined would be a bit like “Cops” on American TV. Instead it was a case of having photographs checked, passports checked, boarding passes checked etc. It was quite funny that through all these immigration checks, passport checks, photograph checks, security checks, there was not one British face there :-)

 

We finally made it into the departure lounge, basically one big room surrounded by shops. We had a while to wait for our gate to be called, so we had to sit there bored to tears waiting for our flight to be called. This is one reason I hate travelling through LHR – there are absolutely no windows at all and nothing to do other than look in overpriced shops.

Finally our gate was announced, and we went through to have our photos checked again. We headed down to gate 8C. Again, there were no windows in the gate area. There were some right at the end but we had to wait at 8C for our flight.

 

Some lady came down and had missed her flight to Inverness, and a lot of Japanese and American tourists turned up. I guessed that this flight would be quite popular with connecting passengers, and less so with people who lived in the UK, as getting a train from London to Manchester is only about 3 hours, less hassle and quicker than travelling to LHR, checking in, transitting LHR, then getting to the centre of Manchester from the airport.

I was hoping we would get a glimpse of the aircraft from the airbridge, but we didn’t as there were no windows here either. It was literally straight onto the aircraft, where we were first to board.

 

 

 

Date	8 December 2008
Airline	BMI
Flight Number	BD592
From	London Heathrow (LHR)
To	Manchester (MAN)
Aircraft	Airbus A319
Registration	G-DBCH
STD/ATD	19:00 / 19:00
STA/ATA	20:10 / 20:07
Flight Time	0:57

 

 

We headed to the back of the aircraft where our seats were, and the cabin crew were quite chatty as always on BMI. The F/A at the back said the flight was almost empty and we could have a row each if we wished. We were amazed that the lady in OSL said it was full, the F/A told us there were only 17 passengers on tonight’s flight.

 

As soon as I mentioned SAS had told us she said “Hmmm that explains it then” :-)

 

The few other passengers were all crowded into the front few rows, the rest of the aircraft was empty apart from us and a couple opposite us.

 

The first officer came on, again very polite. He welcomed us aboard tonight’s flight, for which he would be pilot in command. He said that we may be a little late pushing back from the gate. He said in layman’s terms that the APU had failed, and we had to get a GPU to the aircraft so that we could get air pressure to start the engines. That was also the reason we had no air conditioning yet. Flight time today would be around 30 minutes.

He came on again a little later and said “we needn’t have worried about that, as ATC have instructed us to hold on the stand for a few minutes due to heavy traffic outbound”.

 

Despite this, we pushed away on time at 19:00 and the safety demo began. The crew were back in their seats before we taxied away from the stand, and the lights were dimmed. The F/A at the back was busy reading “OK” magazine.

 

We had a long taxi to runway 27R, where we jumped the queue ahead of some long haul aircraft, including a JAL 777. We lined up and powered up, before rocketing along the runway and taking off.

 

Video of takeoff:

 

We crossed the M25 (which was static), and over towards Slough, before turning right into the cloud, from which we did not even emerge until we were descending into Manchester.

Looking back at OpenATC our route took us towards Luton, before turning left and following the M1 up past Northampton, Leicester, EMA and to Derby, where we took a left turn overhead Ashbourne towards Buxton and Macclesfield.

 

The crew came around selling Coffee, which I took. No sooner had she given me the drink, the first officer came on to announce we were at our cruising altitude of 18,000 feet and we would be starting our descent in a couple of minutes.

 

Sure enough, we started our descent and I had to drink up quickly! We soon emerged from the cloud and were overhead Macclesfield. We flew around to the south of MAN, and started to line up with the runway. As we lined up I got a good view of the runways ahead, and we were on a fairly short final approach.

 

We heard the gear go down, and I could see the wheel come down under the right wing. The cabin crew returned to their seats and we continued our approach to runway 23R.

 

We touched down smoothly and started our long taxi to terminal 1.

 

We pulled onto stand three minutes early, and started to get off the aircraft. The crew said goodbye to us as we made our way up the airbridge. Our bag was the second one off the belt, and again we were happy that our bag had made it all the way from Tromso to Manchester, on three flights, without a hiccup.

 

We then had to wait for our bus to the car park. What a pain in the backside this was. We were sent to the wrong place initially by Airparks, so after talking to a BMI employee we were sent in the right direction. We then had to wait almost an hour for the bus. We eventually boarded the bus at 9pm, where the bus then waited for 15 minutes to pick up other passengers. We then slowly made our way to the car park, where we eventually arrived at 21:20. The flight from LHR-MAN was only 30 minutes long, yet it had taken over an hour to go 800 yards! :-)

 

We got in our car and made our way back across the Peaks to home, where we arrived at 22:20.

 

All in all – an amazing weekend. We had been to the Arctic, and seen the Northern Lights, another dream fulfilled. Lots of new experiences made for a brilliant weekend.

 

The travel was good, albeit with a couple of minor delays. Even with the delays we were treated very well by SAS. BMI were brilliant as always, another smooth flight with not a single problem. I still stand by my thoughts that they are truly the best British airline in terms of customer service, and hopefully the future is bright for them with LH and possibly VS? Who knows!