Airline: easyJet
Flight #: U2632
Route: BFS-LTN
Class: Economy
Seat: 15A
Date: Monday 16th December 2024
Christmas market visited, good food eaten and new city explored, our day in Belfast had been a success, however it was sadly time to head home. We’d once again be flying with easyJet, reversing our route from the morning as we flew from Belfast International to London Luton. I’d tried to get a flight home from Belfast’s other airport, Belfast City, just to see how it compared to its larger competitor, however unfortunately the timings didn’t work. Therefore, we ended our time in Belfast as we started it, at Grand Central bus station. You can read the other posts from our Belfast trip here and here.
With people allowing different amounts of time to get to the airport before flights, the bus from the city centre back to the airport was thankfully much less crowded than the journey into the city that morning. We ended up getting to the airport around 1710, just over two hours before our flight and, having already checked in online, made our way straight through the fairly efficient security checkpoint. My only piece of constructive criticism for Belfast on their security is that they need to open up shortcuts through the queuing system during quiet periods, as we spent way too much time zigzagging given there was no queue.
Having made it through security quickly, we had over an hour before our flight would start boarding so headed to the airport restaurant to get some dinner. The food was alright, but nothing special and the wait for boarding would have been entirely unnoteworthy if it was for the weird robot that delivered our food. I have no idea why the restaurant has these, and I can’t really see that it saves on staff given that someone still has to load the robot, but it certainly made dinner more interesting.
With the gate announced around 45 minutes before departure, we made our way to one end of the terminal building and gate 10, ready to get on board and head home. The gate area here allowed for us to be ‘pre-boarded’ into what felt like a cattle pen, whilst we waited for the inbound flight to empty. What always surprises me at airports is when people end up at the wrong gate, because everything is well sign posted, and on this occasion one lady had somehow ended up at our gate rather than the one for her booked Newcastle flight. The gates weren’t even close to each other, with the Newcastle flight departing from gate 18 near the entrance to the departure lounge!
With the inbound flight having arrived, I was able to see that our aircraft was G-UZLB, a five-year-old Airbus A320neo. Whilst easyJet does have Belfast based aircraft, G-UZLB was a Luton based aircraft and had arrived in from the ‘London’ airport having already operated a round trip to Lanzarote earlier in the day. Once the inbound passengers had all disembarked, #BoardingNotBoarding began around 1900, with us all having our boarding passes scanned and waiting on the stairs, with a mess of people waiting at the bottom by the door to the ramp. A crowded 10 minutes later, we were thankfully allowed to boarding properly and headed out onto the ramp to board via stairs.
We were in seats 15A and 15B for the flight back to England and, with this being busier than the morning flight, we didn’t end up having any extra room to spread out once boarding was completed at 1920. It took a while for us to then pushback, seemingly whilst we awaited a de-icing check, and when we did pushback at 1940, we then proceeded to either undertake the world’s slowest taxi or were still being towed for a while. Eventually, at 1950, we began our proper taxi towards the runway, passing West Atlantic’s G-NPTA in its “1st -800 Boeing Converted Freighter” livery on the way. Take off from runway 25 was at 1956, and we were soon making a left-hand turn to head south-east out over County Down and across the Irish Sea.
The flight was extremely uneventful, and I settled down with a book for the 45 minutes or so it would take us to get to Luton. After the turn following take-off from Belfast, we headed in a straight line, passing to the south of the Isle of Man and crossing the English coast over The Wirral. A small right turn between Chester and Crewe then took us on a path over Stafford and Coventry before we made a left turn to start the approach sequence for Luton’s runway 26. Final approach brought us over Stevenage, before we touched down at 2042, 46 minutes after take-off. The taxi to stand took us passed the multitude of business jets parked up, including Netjets Europe’s CS-PHU. We were at the gate just three minutes after landing, and we were off the plane and into the terminal just a few minutes after that.
All in all this flight with easyJet was pretty decent. The flight itself was comfortable and peaceful, even with quite a busy flight and despite a delayed departure, we arrived at Luton on time. Belfast International isn’t the greatest airport to fly out of, mainly due to a lack of seating, however there’s much worse. Overall, short but sweet.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 3*
Service 5*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 16/25 (read about my rating system here!)
Flights & Times 