I arrived safely at Bilbao Airport after some faffing about working out the airport bus. The temperature was much cooler than when I had arrived and there were a few brief moments of rain, as might be evident from the grey sky. At least it prepared me for what the weather was likely going to be like in the UK.
The terminal felt quite busy and there was a limited amount of seating available in the main section.
There was one of the quickest airport security processes to go through, it took under three minutes from walking into the area to leaving it.
I noticed that there was a VIP lane into security for decadent passengers such as Richard.
After a visit to the lounge, which I wrote about separately, I discovered that there was still no gate for my flight so I pottered about exploring the now relatively quiet airport. At least that meant I was able to examine a lot of airport infrastructure, although I did wonder whether I should have just spent another thirty minutes in the lounge eating chorizo.
This was a bit confusing, it’s the line for border control and there’s one agent dealing with passengers on the left and one agent behind four kiosks on the right. I thought I’d try the kiosk and it scanned my passport before stating “invalid passport”, so I assumed it was just for EU passports despite the number of people using it. I went back to the queue and the agent called over that I could just walk through and he’d open the gate. I wasn’t sure if EES was working and just reporting a failure, or whether they were bypassing it. Either way I haven’t got a stamp in my passport, although that appears to be quite random now at the EU borders, presumably to keep collectors of passport stamps emotionally unsettled.
As usual for Wizz Air, I found the boarding process to be well managed and it was clear which queue to get in.
As might be evident, the seating Gods gave me a window seat and I was very comfortable during the flight.
The outskirts of London somewhere. The flight itself was peaceful, the crew were friendly, no-one annoyed me, nothing fell off the aircraft and I spent two hours playing games on my phone instead of sleeping. This might not have been the most sensible life choice, but it kept me amused. The announcements from the pilots were clear, we landed on time and this was once again excellent value for £9 using my Wizz Air Multipass. For that amount, I require a seat, basic structural integrity and a landing broadly in the advertised country. All were achieved.
We boarded via an air bridge in Bilbao, so this is back in London Luton. The aircraft is G-WUKR which I’ve been on before when it brought me back to London Luton from Tallinn. I’m not sure why I am pleased to meet an aircraft again as I doubt it remembers me.
And the aircraft looking very lovely there in the middle.
There were long queues at London Luton as if they hadn’t expected some planes to land there, but the whole process took just under half an hour which ultimately wasn’t too bad. I then had an exciting few hours in the airport before getting a coach to Stansted and then a train to Norwich, but that riveting commentary can come in the next post as I would not want to overwhelm my two loyal blog readers with too much inter-airport glamour all at once.