Journey

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As I write this I’m currently sitting in the emergency exit seat of a Virgin Atlantic A340-600, extra legroom and best placed to get off if we crash!!! It’s taken a hell of a lot of effort to get to this point starting off with a long, long wait in Manchester airport; a place I now despise with a passion. Checked in for bmi flight BD589 due to depart at 15.25, once I’ve said my goodbyes I trek to the gate I’ve been told to go to only to find no plane there at three. At about five past three I noticed a pall of fire engines heading towards the runway as if something bad was happening and low and behold, which plane was the plane landing? My bmi regional Embraer 135 jet-was followed to the gate by four massive fire engines and countless airfield ops 4x4’s- which had apparently been struck by lightning which entered through the tail leaving through the port wing and apparently blowing several electrical systems. Luckily I had four hours in between arriving in Heathrow to departing for Jo’burg so bmi put me on the 16.55 flight (which typically managed to actually depart at 17.30) and so I got to Heathrow with about two hours before my flight to Jo’burg. I did my transfer from terminal one to terminal three, arriving in the connections centre where I went to the Virgin desks to see if I could get an emergency exit seat at which the girl behind the desk told me I’d been offloaded from the flight for some reason. Luckily she sorted it out but the idiots at bmi during changing my flight from Manchester managed to offload me from the Virgin flight. All in all it was an interesting journey to this point but I’m finally on my way properly………..

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