CHeck-in and security was easy, as always at LCY. Met my work colleague in the departure lounge and we did a bit of work. Flight initially came up as "next info at 13:15" - asked at desk what this meant and we were told there was a technical fault that they were trying to fix.
At 13:15, came up boarding, so hoped that the technical fault was fixed. Made our way down to the gate to see a plane outside with both doors shut and no "pre-flight" stuff going on around it. Asked at the gate if there was an idea how much longer we would have to wait and was told that they would be making an annoucement soon.
Once everyone was in the gate, an annoucement was made that the plane we were due to travel out on still had a technical fault. Unfortunately the spare plane was an Embraer E170 rather than an Embraer E190. This means that there were 21 fewer seats and therefore they needed 21 volunteers otherwise the last 21 people to arrive/print off boarding cards would be denied boarding (note here I checked in at sequence 003 but was about number 50 on the list of passengers as didn't print on line). We both jumped at the compensation offered of 250 Euros (converted to £214). Luckily they managed to easily get 21 volunteers - we only had to wait for the next flight in 2 hours time! It was good that people volunteered as there were three armed airport police at the gate when this was dealt with just in case people started kicking off.
Once 21 people had volunteered, we were walked back through the terminal, left to go through international arrivals and off to the ticket desk. It seemed to take a long time to be processed, and there was a bit of confusion as to whether we had to wait for bags or these would be locally re-routed onto the later flight. Once we had our compensation card, it was off to check-in to get our new boarding cards (our luggage tags numbers were taken at the ticket desk).
New boarding card in hand it was time to head off through a busier security and back in to the departure lounge. After doing some work, it was time to head off to the new departure gate. Boarding on time, but then someone decided not to travel and it took for ever for the baggage handlers to find the bag (that being the one inside the hold and the five standing around chatting outside).
Once this was found, it was a short taxi and a steep LCY take-off. LCY-ZRH is a short flight. The usual cookie / bird seed offering was bought around before / without the drinks round. About 25 minutes later, the drinks trolley appeared - maybe it takes a long time to look after 3 rows of club europe? Asked what the white wine was - told there are two - not sure what they are like - why don't you have both of them!!
After the short flight, we landed with ZRH and then a long taxi round to the gate. This was an 'E' gate here, so meant that we had to get a transit over to the main terminal - there seemed to be a lot of walking involved although everything seemed very efficient. Arrived at the baggage belt with a count down clock to arrival of the bags (slightly late, which must be a disappoint for the Swiss!) - slightly nervous that the bags were still at LCY or somewhere else. No worries.....my bag was first off!!!
Thoghts about this flight - great to take a 2 hour scheduled delay (in the end the earlier flight only arrived about an hour before ours) and get some compensation for this!!!
