Day 16 (Part 2) – Delays, Drama & Derry

After many miles, trains and lifts, we finally made it to Terminal 2 for our last flight: London to Derry. But of course, we were too early to check in and had to hang about for 25 minutes before we could join the queue. When it was time, we were first in line, which felt promising — until it wasn’t.

Turns out, despite being first, we couldn’t actually check in. Loganair, in their infinite wisdom, only allow three infants per flight — and they’d already booked five. Add to that a bizarre policy where babies can only sit in odd-numbered seats and we were stuck. Because our tickets were part of the same booking as our Australia flights, we couldn’t check in earlier like everyone else, so the system decided Anna could go on, but Alexander and I couldn’t.

My phone then died, so I couldn’t even check the app or our booking — classic. The guy behind us was getting irritated and huffed about the delay, only to immediately be charged £140 for overweight bags. Karma. While the airline staff had about five people on phones trying to fix the mess, Anna entertained Alexander and I charged my phone in Café Nero.

Eventually, they got us sorted — but not in the seats we were supposed to have, and not together either. At that stage, we weren’t complaining. It’s only a short flight from London to Derry. But no, the drama wasn’t done. Somehow, they also managed to mess up our baggage. They tried to charge us £20 to check in our free hand luggage, which we were fine with, but they insisted we shouldn’t pay and should take it on. At security, of course, we had all our suncream, hair oil etc from earlier when we were losing weight from our hold bags so everything got binned. Thanks for that.

Despite being Heathrow, there was no family queue at security and it was painfully slow. We had no time to change Alexander or even catch our breath and ended up full-on running to the gate, pram and all, down the escalator (not with baby inside) as the gate was “closing”.

At the gate, we got stuck behind two more people who funnily were also on our flight from Perth. They hadn’t had issues until this final leg either — they apparently didn’t get their photo taken at security and were sent all the way back. We finally got through… only to be called back again — they’d forgotten to check Alexander in.

Eventually, we boarded — and because the other couple didn’t make it back in time, we got their seats right at the front and were able to sit together. No idea what happened to them, but we hope they made another flight!

Alexander fell asleep for the short flight to Derry. I, on the other hand, got a nosebleed mid-flight and had to sit with tissue stuffed up my nostril like a child.

We landed in Derry to classic Derry February weather, collected Pippin and rounded off the trip with the only fitting meal: a Chinese takeaway.

It’s been a brilliant trip to Australia and Alexander’s first big adventure was one to remember. We’ll definitely miss Perth.