Edinburgh; Friday, 28 February, 2020

After finishing work I headed down to Gatwick. It was a quick and smooth journey through the airport and onto the plane.

We pushed back a couple of minutes early, but spent quite a bit of time waiting in the queue to depart before starting our journey north.

It was a smooth flight, and everything was on schedule to land more than 15 minutes early until just before we were about to land we all felt the sudden surge of power and change of pitch as the pilots pushed the engines back up to maximum and started a rapid climb as they declared a go-around.

A couple of minutes later, after levelling out over Fife and starting the second approach attempt the captain came on the PA to let us know why we’d had to go around. There was a plane that had been cleared for take-off ahead of our landing that had suddenly developed a mechanical problem before it started its takeoff roll, so was still sitting on the end of the runway as we approached, meaning it wasn’t safe for us to land.

The broken down plane was clearly moved pretty quickly as by the time we came back round 15 minutes later we were able to make a smooth landing without any issues.

An equally quick journey through the airport at Edinburgh and straight onto a tram to go the couple of stops round to my hotel.

I checked in and headed up to my room to drop stuff off before popping back down to the bar for a quick nightcap before turning in.