Arriving at Gatwick Airport on the early morning bus…. Instead of the cinematic sweep up the driveway to an impressive departures hall, you’re unceremoniously dumped at the back of the building, which looks more like the loading dock of an industrial estate than the gateway to international travel, but as it was 05:00 it was too early to care much about this. There was no queue at security, so I was left pondering slightly why I had left my hotel so early, but better to be early than late.
I haven’t flown from Gatwick Airport for some time and I wasn’t sure if there would be space in one of the lounges using my Priority Card, but it’s fair to say that My Lounge was not packed.
Lounge food and drink which was typical fare for British airport lounges, some dry and uninteresting food alongside a dreadful lager. The sausage, bacon and hash brown were OK, I poured myself just a small amount of Cruzcampo since it was still early morning, took one mouthful and realised just how dreadful it is. The orange juice was out of cheap cartons, but in fairness to the whole arrangement, the coffee, food and orange juice was all filling enough.
Mine was the 08:00 Wizz Air flight to Faro and as usual for the airline, everything was efficient, clearly signed and without delay. There were more bag checks than usual which always adds to the drama, but once again, this didn’t impact me.
It was raining when I walked to the aircraft, it always feels a shame leaving the UK when there’s weather that I like. The aircraft registration was G-WUND, the same one that took me to an icy Tallinn a few months ago. The seating Gods had allocated me a window seat, so that was a rather handy arrangement.
Nearly at Faro and the aircraft toured up and down the coast a bit before landing. We had experienced a delay on departure, the reason for which was never mentioned, but as Wizz Air pad their schedules so much, we still seemed to manage to arrive on time. The pilots were generally decent on the number of announcements, the crew members were all personable and I fell asleep for most of the flight so don’t really know much of what happened.
It was very quickly evident that it was too hot.
The border control process felt a little chaotic, but these new machines for UK passports seemed interesting, but I wasn’t called to try them. The whole queueing arrangement was a little chaotic in places and it felt like a long wait, but it was 31 minutes in the end, which isn’t entirely unreasonable given this is a busy time of year for the airport. It does feel though that the airport in general is creaking in places with passenger numbers, so yet another extension to the building seems likely for future years.
Anyway, this was another very satisfactory experience given that the flight cost £8.99, the flight was comfortable, the boarding process was efficient and the crew were friendly. I am though getting the creeping sense that most airports in Europe are about five million passengers beyond what they were built for.