Home Time

Or no more salami and cheese!

Well it was time to head back to Southampton. We had an early bus to Geneva for our midday flight to London. After picking up some Pain au Chocolat from the patisserie for breakfast we walked to the bus. It had stopped snowing and it was raining! To be honest I was glad to be heading home.

The bus trip was uneventful and we got to Geneva around 10am. After checking in we walked around the departures terminal for a while, ate some fruit and then headed through security to our departure gate.

It was packed but we found a seat and waited for boarding. Then all of a sudden the screen changed to say the plane was delayed and would not arrive until 1:20pm (which means we would not take off until at least 1:45pm). Jules had a 3pm flight from Gatwick to Dublin to catch up with a friend but it still looked like she would be fine (considering the one hour time difference). We started boarding around 1:30 but then the plane sat at the terminal for ages. Finally the captain announced that they had been given the wrong manifest printout by the Swiss Authorities and they had to get the correct one.

We finally left the gate but there were about six planes in front of us so we did not take off until around 2:30. Jules was (to borrow a famous Aussie phrase) gropable! She had no chance of making her flight to Dublin now. It turned out the plane was initially late for mechanical reasons so I thought perhaps Britannia would pay for Jules to catch a later flight.

After we landed around 3pm we were walking through the terminal to passport control and saw Jules' Ryanair flight taking off! We went to the Britannia counter but they said they did not have to do anything because Jules did not leave 3.5 hours between flights. It would have cost her £150 to get on the next flight which was not worth it.

So we jumped in the car and headed home. It was an unfortunate ending to an otherwise pretty good week.


Jules' Ryanair Flight