The trip home

Hey everyone,

I was planning to blog about my trip home as soon as I got there, but seeing my family, girlfriend and friends again just made me forget about that. Therefor, I'm putting it online right now, but first of all I hope everyone had a great Christmas and I wish you all a very happy new year.

So yeah, the first part is over. In the meantime, I'm back in Switzerland already, after having had 2 weeks of leave. But getting home didn't come without problems, unfortunately.

As you might have noticed, Europe suffered under the snow of the past few weeks and this, of course, had a huge impact on aviation. Throughout Europe, there were several airports that had to be closed because they just couldn't cope with it all. One of those airports was Amsterdam Schiphol which was, as Murphy's Law prescribes, my destination aerodrome. This lead to some fearful hours, checking the internet continuously to see if my flight would be or was already cancelled. At around 13h00, the EUROCONTROL-website said Schiphol was closing until 15h00 but as my flight was scheduled at 20h00, I still had my hopes up.

Unfortunately, about 10 minutes later, I read on the KLM-site that all flights were cancelled. Expecting a huge mass at the airport, I decided to leave earlier than I would have in normal conditions so I arrived there at around 17h00. There I got the final confirmation of my flight being cancelled, so I started queuing for a new ticket in a long line of other people waiting there. A girl and her mother, who were standing right behind me, were actually supposed to be leaving Zurich at 08h00 that morning, but at 17h30 they were still far away from leaving.
During our wait, we all had a lot of time to look around and this made me notice the big and at that time very ironic/sarcastic billboard hanging above the desk where we were hoping to rebook our flights

A huge billboard above the desk.
Translated, it says: When your trip around the world does take a bit longer.

After nearly 5 hours of waiting, I was approached by someone who said he might be able to help me get a new ticket right away. At that time, I was just 3rd in line anymore, but as each person seemed to take some 30 minutes to get another flight, I took the shot. Apparently though, he wasn't joking as not more than 10 minutes later, he gave me a new ticket for the first flight of the next day. This flight was leaving at 06h55, so in the end, my delay would only have been about 11 hours. The women behind me weren't so lucky, as they were still waiting for their new ticket about an hour later and in the end, they were only able to leave Zurich in the evening of the next day.

As it was already 22h30 when I got my new ticket, I decided to stay at the airport for the night and sleep in instead of going to the apartment again. Even though it took me some time to find a comfortable place to sleep, I woke up several times during the night and had to get up at 05h00, it was an experience I really cherish now.

After waking up, I joined a group of people, already trying to check in. The first thing we heard, however, was that this flight was also cancelled and we had to start from the beginning again. Luckily, the flight's cancellation was an auto-cancellation connected to another flight that was cancelled (bit hard to explain, if you don't understand, feel free to ask about it), so at 06h00 we were finally dropping off our luggage and checking in continuously.

As of then, almost everything went pretty smooth and by 06h30, I was sitting at the gate to board KLM1952 instead of the intended KLM1964. Due to the late check-in start, there was another delay of about an hour but it didn't really kill my mood as I was finally going home again. In fact, it wasn't until I got a ticked-off gate attendant (apparently, my hand luggage was too big, even though the check-in guy said it would be fine) that I felt as if I could take on the world. But still, I didn't let that take me down. I boarded happy and I immediately asked the flight attendants if it was allowed to take the cockpit seat, being an ATCo-student.

I wasn't allowed in during start-up, taxi, take-off and climb but when we reached the French-Luxembourg border, I was called in by the flight attendant and got to sit in and follow every move of the airplane until it came to a halt at the gate out a front row seat, right behind both pilots.

I don't know whether it's standard procedure or whether they did it to impress me, but despite an overcast at a mere 600 feet, the autopilot was disconnected well before having the runway in sight and the approach was flown entirely manual.

"KLM50G, cleared to land runway 18C, only vacate via W8 or W10"

The above was our landing clearance, as received by Schiphol Tower, and what a sight it was to see the runway appear out of the clouds and all but two taxiways covered with at least 30 cm of snow, all from the cockpit. Not a bad thing actually, for my first flight in 3 years time, don't you think?

After having taxied the Boeing 737-400 to gate D46, I wished the crew merry Christmas holidays and headed for the train station, to get to Zwolle, where I was finally able to join my girlfriend on a family weekend.

At first, I had expected my trip to take about 5 hours, from leaving my Swiss bedroom to seeing my girlfriend. In the end, it took me just a bit more than 19 hours, including a night at the airport, but to be honest, to me it didn't matter at all. I was finally with the person I love, I met some great people at the airport, had some new experiences and I finally had some leave.