Thursday, August 14, 2008

Back from holidays.....


And today, is the first day it hasn't rained - although the day's not over yet. We got back on Thursday at about 1am... A very unpleasant flight that took us on a detour via another Greek island and Luton - all in all, about 10 hours door to door.

It must be something about XL Airways that they feel the need to detour or delay every return charter flight. Each time its something to do with the fuel and either being able to, or, not being able to re-fuel.

Last year we had to sit on the tarmac in Mykonos for about 2 hours while they 'de-fuelled' the aircraft - a new one on me I admit. Apparently, the aircraft was over-weight and the extra fuel being removed would solve this problem. After the 2 hours had elapsed, we finally took off only to be told by the captain, that we needed to have a stopover in some remote Italian airport for a refuel.

At least this year they were a little more creative with their reason for needing to refuel at an un-scheduled airport - it seems it was too warm to refuel in Greece, hence the need for a visit to Luton! 35c ! I wonder how the airports in warmer climates deal with this? Do they all need to fly up north to cooler airports to refuel?

Odd that XL haven't worked out the whole 'fuel - weight' equation yet though...

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