Unlike our last visit the British Airways flights out and back looked ok for standby’s and most of us travelled with BA. 4 members travelled by Easyjet but only because of cost because BA has a far better schedule with regard to timings and now using Easyjet means a night stop at Toulouse because the first flight in to Toulouse is later than BA.

As usual, a number of us decided to meet at Hatton Cross and pile into one or two cars and drive to Gatwick that morning. As we were confident of getting the BA flight back, Paul and myself offered to drive 8 of us down to Gatwick. As the timings of the BA flights have changed from last year, it meant an early start of 5 am from Hatton Cross.

The flight left on time and arrived TLS early and in the usual warm sunshine.  When we met our guide, Christine, for the day, she told me we were very lucky as this was the first sunny day for quite some time.

We got our passes from the Security Point and started our tour. This was where I realised why we kept the size of the party to 18 and not more. Airbus have small coaches with 18 seats on them and even though it can get a bit cosy, they are excellent at getting round all the ramp areas and being able to virtually park anywhere. Because we had 19 members we were in a large coach which couldn’t park in all the usual spots and this meant we had to walk around the airfield much more than usual. This obviously attracted more interested from Security and 1 member lost his pass very early on in the tour, me, the most experienced member, having arranged all our Section visits to date! On 2 occasions we were under the security spotlight with me without the pass. Anyway, the checks were to make sure we were not taking photographs and passed without incident, as all members are aware of the camera ban.

Unlike previous visits, we did not need a new pass to visit the A.380 facility, except, that is, for me.  The A.380 Line is now in full swing with 9 or 10 frames being built in the impressive building, which is 500 metres long and houses 2 separate production lines.

As expected everyone standing by for the last BA flight back to Gatwick got on and even though it left 15 minutes late we got into Gatwick on time.