Flying Vbird: a story of planes, trains, automobiles and no more bike!

Ok, as some of you may know i have been on a VBird flight. Before you start reading my trip report, be aware that it is long and may sound like a mayor rant. If it does, bare in mind i have had two days with nothing but $hit.

My trip was a one day trip between Niederrhein (NRN) and Berlin Schöneveld (SXF). I had not flown in a while and the price was dirtcheap: 39.98 euro including taxes (about 26 pounds). This I found just the excuse needed to go to Niederrhein, and an excuse is really needed to visit this place.

The Airport.
I’ll begin at a brief description of the airport, since it is a “new” airport I reckon not many know it. The airport of Niederrhein is somewhat near to Dusseldorf and Nijmegen. Military spotters may know this fileld better under its old name of RAF Laarbruch. Niederrhein is almost fully devoted to VBird. The only other operator to this hellhole is Ryanair, which should give you an indication how far this airport is from any trace of civilization!

The airport is build in a modified ex RAF hangar and looks absolutely great! Lots of glass, highly reflective tiles and steel. The roof still has its old steel and wood structure giving it a certain charm.

The announcement at the airport are rather bad though. There is a lot of echo and the messages end up being impossible to understand. ALso, the remarks section on the destination board was not used. This should have been done as many flights where cancelled and all other lights where delayed. Quite a pity as the rest of the airport is well thought out.

Getting to Niederrhein.
Here the misery starts. There is a shuttle service between a number of places in the region to the airport. Most of these services are nothing more than a heavily subsidized cab that has to be called up to half an hour in advance. I heard that someone had taken a cab from Weeze to Niederrhein and paid a few euros. I took a cab to a nearby town 8 km away and paid 15 euros (more on that later).

But those cabs do not concern me, I got on a real bus service. A regular one for which no booking or calls was required. But this was not yet the moment to count my blessings. Every weekday there are a total of 3, that’s THREE, busses linking the city of Arnhem (via Nijmegen) with Niederrhein. That is 3 busses per DAY in case you where wondering. During the weekend there are 2 (TWO) services.

As is to be expected these busses leave at crappy hours. I had to take a bus at 07:00 from Vitesse’s football stadium, the Gelredome. At that stage i had already finished my first 1,5 hours of travel by bike (YES I am Duch), train and bus. The bus arrived at the airport at 08:00, so now I could wait for my flight of 14:00.

Prelude to problems.
A cool 6 hours to spend shooting every plane in VBirds beautifully painted fleet. What else could a spotter want!

Well, something I would have liked was a normal fence. Normally I can make pictures by standing on my toes and putting the camera over the fence. This is quite impossible at Niederrhein as the fences are a cool 5 metres high! Outch! There is a gate though through which the camera can be pointed to shoot one or two of the planes parked closer by.

This gate could have been very usefull, had there not been a blanket of fog covering most of the Netherlands and Germany. This was an early indication of a VERY long day to come.

And so it begins… almost
Quickly it became clear that flying was going to be hard from this airport. One by one all flights where cancelled until an announcement came echoing through the terminal that all flights had been suspended for an as yet unknown time.

Oh well, I figured, $hit happens. It was still early morning and my flight was not scheduled for another 4 hours so I could not be bothered. The fog would subside and I would fly off to the beautiful field of Schöneveld.

And thus is began.
Checkin was started an hour and a half in advance of the scheduled departure time. Both check-in ladies, Globeground employees, where fast. The security check did not go as fast. The metal detector was way to sensitive so that everyone was pulled “out”. A metal beltbuckle or a lost penny in a deep pocket was enough to make it go crazy. Nonetheless the security check was done in time.

The flight was not on time though. It would be delayed until the plane arrived. In the end we got to board one of the planes that had sat idle on the tarmac for the entire morning. Apparantly the plane arrived earlier than expected? 😀

The total delay was one hour. Some 10 minutes where gained in flight so not big a problem.

The flight.
The plane was of course an A320, as all 4 or 5 of their planes are. Although it said on the nose that the flight was operated by Dutchbird, the flight is done with VBird personnel and if I am not mistaken aircraft. At least the registration implied VBird as it was the PH-VAE whereas Dutchbird’ A320s have registrations in the PH-BM* series.

The plane, ex Sky Service from Canada, looked rather old on the inside. Its production number is 579 which would make it a plane made in 1995. It had large televisions hung from the ceiling. Perhaps surprisingly they where not used in the safety demonstration. Other airlines, such as BMI, do use the TVs for the safety demonstration. Some cracks could be found behind the overhead bins which showed a small view of the inner workings of the plane. Not much to be seen, but it can’t be right that there is a crack in the first place!

After the first ten minutes the cabin crew started selling their food and drinks. They are surprisingly cheap(ish). Not nearly as expensive as the extortion prices at the airport. The in-flight movie was one of the TV episodes of mr Bean followed by some TV gags. People walking into mirrors, people pretending to be a silly police officer and more comical master pieces.

I could not help but notice the age of the average employee. Some of the F/A’s looked younger than I am! And I am only 22! In fact, I’d conservatively guess the oldest F/A at 25! That VBird is a young airline was something I knew, but I did not realise they took it this far! Now I think of it, the airport employees did not look much older. Only the firecrew and policemen had an air of seniority over them.

About 20 minutes before landing the fasten-seatbelt signs where lit up again.

Berlin Schöneveld.
At the airport I went in no time through the security. Then again, there was no security! Of course NRN to SXF is a domestic flight so the lack of security is not much of a problem.

The airport has a rather small terminal from what I can make out. Just 4 jetbridges and some 15 to 20 remote stands. The older generation may remember the times when Schöneveld was located in the DDR. Perhaps that explains the dull layout and the excessive amount of concrete. This should change though. A mayor expansion program is underway under the name of BBI (Berlin Brandenburg International). This will make the two other airports at Berlin redundant and they will therefore be closed when the works are done.

Anway, after the flight I immediatelly went to the observation platform and noticed that the airport was rather quiet. At the far end some planes where parked. Amongst other 2x A319 and 1x A340 from Khaliffa as well as some Lufthansa B737s. They where too far for photography though. A bit later an A310 from African Safari Airlines came in and taxied to the terminal. From here it could be seen that VBird is not just about delays. They had a faster turnaround time that Ryanair!

At 6 ´o clock the platform closed and I went back to departure level. There I saw a warning behind my flight, delayed by 1 hour 15 minutes! A brief yet colourful bit of Dutch slang filled the terminal!

Problems are mounting.
Then I started to realise there is a problem. At NRN I have to take one of the 3 daily busses back home. I should have 50 minutes to get on the bus, and an delay of 1 hour and 15 minutes. Another colourful bit of Dutch filled the terminal!

I went to the check-in desk. Despite the sign on the boards, it was not yet manned. Ten minutes went by, 20 minutes went by, 30 minutes went by. 45 minutes after the announcement on the board the check-in lady arrived. I asked here if she could let the bus wait. She could not, but had the phone number of the servicedesk.

Obviously she gave the wrong number, but they where kind enough to get me the right number. There another young employee got to speak to me. A lovelly girl, but utterly useless. She did not know anything at all and proposed I’d sleep at the airport. That would be hard as you’ll see later.

I called my parent to let them look for alternatives to get me of NRN and to Arnhem. It quickly became obvious that there where none.

Back in Niederrhein.
The flight back was quick but obviously not quick enough to let me catch the last bus service. I asked the lady at the information desk what my options where.

Shock, horror, the terminal closes overnight! Sleeping at the airport benches like I have done twice at AMS is not possible! A hotel had to be booked at 22:30. Fortunately the tourist office at the airport could help me out. A room in hotel “Der Goldener Schwan” was booked in Kevelaer. A taxi would bring me there. Eight kilometer and 16 euros later I was in the hotel. This is a great hotel and if you ever get stranded at NRN I can thoroughly recommend it!

A day later.
Next day I took a cab back to the airport (another 14 euros). From there I took the shuttle service to Arnhem. But the badness did not stop there! I had not realised that my return train ticket had lost its validity due to the much longer than expected trip! And for the first time in half a year I got a ticket check in the train (operated by the total idiots of Syntus)! Suffice to say I was fined 27 euros above the normal fare. My cheap day out had suddenly become quite a bit more expensive than a similar KLM flight.

Brings me to the last bit of the title. The bike…. it was stolen from the train station. A fitting end to two days in which everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong!

usefull links:
http://www.flughafen-niederrhein.de/
http://www.berlin-airport.de/
http://www.vbird.com/
http://www.politie.nl/
http://www.mon.de/nr/hotel.gold.schwan/

donations for my new bike can be deposited on my bank account, please contact me for details

Photo 1 (of 5):
NRN airport around 10 in the morning. The first queue is for VBird travellers who where lining up for refunds and/or rebooking flights. The white in the window is not the glare from the sun, its the fog!