Thank you for the comments everyyone! 😀

Thanks! 😀 I thought it could have been but as it wasn’t on the departures board it confused me – also the departures board had the Islas flight after ours, and it was meant to be leaving 15mins before us!

The return

Flight: FCA4745
Route: FUE-LGW
Date: 09/04/06
Aircraft: 321
Reg: G-OOAH
Seat: 20F
Dep time: 18:45
Arr time: 22:35

After a very enjoyable holiday on the island of Fuerteventura watching the arrivals on RWY01, it was time to go home. Here are a few shots I took of 738s from Air Berlin and HapagFly flying directly over our hotel. (Sorry the pics aren’t great)

We left the hotel shortly after 4 o’clock to get to the airport for our return flight to London. As we approached the airport we had a great view of RWY01. As we arrived on a coach we had a massive queue at check-in, it took a good 15/20 minutes before we actually checked-in. After we did, we swiftly went through security and up the escalators to the departure lounge. I found a good place to sit in-between gates 3/4 and 5/6 with a great view of the runway and stands. I went to have a look at the viewing terraces but the tunnels to the gates were in the way so I decided to stay where I was, and I managed to take these shots

-Two Condors, the 320 is operating the DE7653 to Dresden

Then, to my surprise, as I was looking at the runway, the special Binter Canarias 734 was slowing on RWY19, inbound from Gran Canaria.

The Binter 734, just arrived on stand, was shortly going to depart as the NT225 to Gran Canaria. Sorry my pic isn’t great, here is a better shot of the aircraft – http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1021814/L/

A Condor 753 taxiing out to RWY19 to operate the DE7827 to Stuttgart

At 18:05, 20 minutes late, our aircraft arrived from LGW. I realised it was G-OOAH, the same aircraft that brought us here. I wasn’t that surprised as FCA only base one A321 in LGW for the winter, and I didn’t think the aircraft would have swapped bases over the past week. Here’s a shot of it approaching Gate3.

An Islas ATR72 inbound from G. Canaria, soon leaving as the IF516 back there

Then, a Myair 320 arrived out of nowhere, as it wasn’t on the departure board, and soon after it departed, a Futura came in also – any ideas where they were off too?? :confused:

Quite a while after the aircraft arrived, we were called for boarding with one of those famous Spanish airport announcements. We quite quickly had our passports and boarding passes checked by the authorities and we boarded the aircraft, once again greeted by the extremely friendly cabin crew. I had a quick peek into the cockpit as I passed – I have to say I’m very impressed with the Airbus 32X series flight deck! I walked down the aisle to my seat, and the cabin crew informed us to sit down as quickly as possible as we had a departure time to meet in the next 10 minutes, and if we didn’t meet it we would end up with a very lengthy delay. However the pilot apologised for the delay as it was due to strong headwinds on the way down, making the flight half an hour longer than expected, but we would hopefully make up for lost time in the air.

The passengers did what they were asked to do, and the safety video was being shown and we were soon pushing back. We then taxied out to RWY19, and as we did an FCA752 arrived from Manchester. By now it was 19:15, half an hour after we should have left. We soon lined up on RWY19 hough, and took off over the resort of Costa Caleta, before making a right turn over the island and having a great overview of the FUE runway extension. Sorry I didn’t have a pic but I have a Google Earth screenshot to show you instead.

We then had another very enjoyable flight with First Choice. Today’s movie was Walk the Line which I enjoyed watching, and the meal was Cottage Pie and a Triple Berry Sponge Pudding (I know this may sound a bit weird but I have to say it was probably the nicest cottage pie I’ve ever tasted). After the meal, I watched a thunderstorm over the Bay of Biscay, which was amazing to watch, especially at night. We then over flew Brittany on a lovely clear night, before approaching the south English Coast, where we went into cloud and I didn’t see the ground again until we landed.

We came out of the cloud just before landing and I saw Crawley all lit up, just before landing on RWY08R. We arrived at 22:40, just 5mins behind schedule, which was quite good when we left half an hour late! We taxied to Gate49, the same Gate I arrived at last year from FUE. We exited on the new glass airbridge, and inside there is no carpet as it is being refurnished. After a long walk we collected our baggage and cleared customs, and to my surprise outside it was snowing! What fun we had then, going back home to the West Country in a blizzard on the M25!!

Overall I really enjoyed FCA again and they really made my holiday that extra bit special.
–Comfort 10
–Service 10
–Meals 11 😀
–On-time 9
–IFE 8