Last day. In Dubai now.
I had discovered that the 109 bus to Tegel Airport went past my front door, the stop was 100m away. For €1.70 I was at the airport in 30 minutes, at 8:45am, 2 hours before boarding Air Berlin flight AB6191 to Munich.
There was a potential problem though. The plane was loaded, ready to push back from the gate, but didn’t. The door to the flight deck was open, and there were 2 guys with Air Berlin Technik reflective jackets on, one in the left seat where the pilot would sit. The pilot was standing, lots of conversation going on. The chief flight attendant closed the door from the outside. The main door of the plane had not been closed. A while later the pilot emerged, made a statement on the PA, in German, then went back into the flight deck. I was thinking that if I missed my Emirates flight in Munich it would not be a disaster, but it would spoil my day, and my weekend. The door stayed open and we watched them talking and manipulating controls. Eventually the Techniks left, with a smile and a handshake with the pilot, he resumed the left seat, the main door was closed and we took off, about half an hour late.
The beer was at the gate in the Munich Airport. Baggage retrieved from Left Luggage, checked in without hassle about being 1kg above the Emirates baggage limit, through Immigration. Nothing else within my control could go wrong now. I had €4.57 in coins. A beer was €4.40. Of course, I donated that last €0.17 to UNICEF later, on the Qantas flight.
Even Immigration wasn’t smooth going. One queue, two Polizia handling them, and a guy pushed around the queue and went right up to the Polizia. Lots of discussion we couldn’t hear, hand waving. Both people being processed at the time involved, and, out of our sight, the Polizia. Then an announcement was audible, calling for a named passenger to get on the plane. Maybe it was him? I was thinking the Polizia were too well mannered, they had to make a decision: process him out of turn or kick him to the end of the queue. Everybody involved had lost 5 minutes by now, including me. Eventually he got his passport stamped, and was off. I’d have made him wait his turn, late or no.
Something beyond my control did happen though. Approaching Dubai, almost touching down, suddenly the engines revved up, and we headed skyward at a rate I wouldn’t have thought possible for an Airbus 380. It could not have had much fuel aboard by then, so was light. When we levelled off after a couple of minutes, the pilot explained that there had been another plane still on the runway. It took about 20 minutes to go round and land. That gave me time to finish the second episode of Ken Burns documentary series from 1990, “The Civil War”. Still, after 26 years, the best series I have ever seen on television.