Gothenburg; Friday, 16 September, 2016

I’d managed to finish work a little early so headed down to the airport, checked in and went through to the departures lounge for what I thought would be a couple of hours wait until my flight was due to depart.

At 17:35 a text came through from Norwegian welcoming me on board the 19:35 flight, followed a couple of minutes later by another one telling me that the flight was now delayed until 22:30. What had already been a late arrival into Gothenburg got later, and the chances of making the last bus from the airport – that I’d already paid for – started to shrink.

There was no further news for another three hours until just after half 8 when the delay started to creep up in 20 minute intervals, every 20 minutes or so. At this point I bit the bullet and booked for a taxi to meet me at the airport as the arrival time was now past the time of the last bus at 1am.

Eventually, after several passengers had pestered the handling agent enough, they admitted that the plane was on the tarmac at Gothenburg with a fault that was still being fixed. Around 10pm the plane finally took off from Gothenburg and began its journey into Gatwick.

Every other plane of the evening had left and any reminder of it had been cleared from the departures board in the lounge with the exception of ours – still showing Await Gate Information.

Finally, just after 23:30 we received the long awaited gate number and what was left of the passenger population of the departures lounge headed down to gate 16.