EDI-STD Trip report

Had a brilliant day yesterday (Sat may 8th) it started hideously early but was worth it. Me and Matthew (murray) had a whale of a time!

easyJet Flight EZY228 was scheduled to depart Edinburgh Turnhouse Airport at 07:00. So at 3am, my alarm clock wrang, waking me up from a sleep I had only drifted into 3 hours beforehand. At 03:10 I hit the road and made my way north for about 20 miles to pick up Matthew. I arrived at his house, we had a cup of tea and left for my house to pick up my grandmother, the main reason for this trip. She doesn’t speak english and the most cost effective way we could get her home was by Air Berlin from Stansted direct to the local airport where she lives, Hanover.
After picking gran up we set out for Edinburgh at around 05:10. We arrived at the airport and checked in for 5:50. A little while befor ethe flight, but nonetheless 40 people had checked in before us, so we were assigned boarding number 42 to 44. the chances of a window seat seemed dim.

We decided to head straight for the departures lounge, in order to secure a seat close to the gate which was number 11.
Once there we saw our aicraft fro the outbound flight. G-EZYC a boeing 737-300. No easyJet.com titles were on the fuselage, but the tail and engine cowlings were their familiar orange with white easyJet titles. (See picture below) I took a snap from the departure lounge so excuse the reflection.

Boarding began on time at 06:30, we passed the boarding pass and passport control and headed down stairs to the apron. We stood at the foot of the stairs for a few minutes due to some sort of delay. Myself and Matthew deducted it was probably the crew boarding a disabled passenger who we had spotted earlier.
We boarded and luckily found window seats. Sorry I can’t recall which seat rows, but they were both “A” seats, putting is on the left side of the aircraft.
Once everyone was aboard, doors closed and we pushedback right in time.
We taxied to the runway, turned onto rwy 23 and power was applied to the engines straight away. The take of the highly enjoyable, getting pushed back in the seat, the noise… marvelous. We left the ground at 07:02 and entered the thick soup like cloud that had been hanging over Edinburgh all night.
I took a few snap shots as you can see below.

We were soon in cruise at 31,000 feet, having previously being higher but turbulence made the crew change levels.
The crew were friendly and smiled happily. Not bad for such an early start.
The morning sun wash shining brightly so photos were all but impossible. I did however manage to snap one off, but at the cost of the sun glaring it.

Before long we were descending into Stansted which was covered with the same soup as Edinburgh. So we saw nothing of the surrounding countryside until we were on final approach.
On short finals it got bumpy, we were getting thrown about a bit from left to right but the touchdown was smooth. I enjoyed the bumps 🙂 but it made any photo I took of us flaring over the runway crap and unusable. So the only photo I have here is of the flaps fully extended as we began to vacate the active runway.
Well, after that we parked up at our stand to deplaned. It was 08:40 and it felt like late afternoon for us.

We checked my gran in for her Air Berlin flight which wasn’t due to board until 10:50, so we decided to get a bite to eat. We found a place called Pont1
which served a nice breakfast. The food was good, and not all that expensive at arounf £5 per head.
After Breakfast my Gran went through to departures and me and matthew we free to continue with what I had planned to fill in the time between then and out return flight at 21:00.

We made our way to the bus terminal at Stansted, bought tickets to Heathrow and boarded the number 727 (how ironic) service to heathrow central bus station. After a little over a hour we were deposited on Heathrow soil and I’m not ashamed to say, it was daunting. Everywhere around us was airport. We were right beside the famous control tower and saw the traffic radar. We could here the sounds of aicraft landing and taking off, but just like Edinburgh and Stansted a thick soup obscured movements about 300 feet.
So, how to get to the visitors center. We could find no information, no maps., nothing. We wandered about for a while looking for something that looked helpfull. I found an internet phone and started looking on the net for information, while Matthew headed for an information booth. He returned with what we needed. Direction for bus services we should take to the Renaissance hotel on Bath Road. We returned to the central bus station an after a few minutes of waiting boarded service 140 and were soon at the visitors center.

We waited around for a while, looked at the exhibits and models. Then at 2:30pm we met up with a frinedly gentlemen.
The gentlemen is responsible for designing the liveres of many many airlines, including Air Tahiti Nui, BWIA and Jet2.
I’m not going to mention his name, as I’m not sure he wants me to. But he does lurk unregistered on these forums.
After a personalised tour of Heathrow, being told all sort of interesting tidbits about the area and the functions of many buildings we had some lunch, and talked about liveries, design etc. A Highly enjoyable afternoon.

Well, I’ll leave it at that, my fingers are sore from typing and my keyboards smoking from the strain. And you’ll all be pretty bored at this point.

Matthew should be on later and will report on the Trip home.

I’ll leave you with the photos of our outbound flight.

In sequence:

1: G-EZYC on stand @ EDI
2-5: Climbout out of Edinburgh