Airline: Ryanair
Flight #: FR3633
Route: DRE-STN
Class: Economy
Seat: 7F
Date: Sunday 25th May 2025
After just over 24 hours in the German city of Bremen, it was time to head home and that of course meant a Ryanair flight back to Stansted. I was hoping for another short uneventful flight, partly as I had work at 0600 the following day and had chosen Bremen for this trip because the return flight was balanced perfectly between allowing time to explore and getting back at a reasonable time. Whilst the flight itself was short and uneventful, the lead up to it was not, so keep reading if you want to join me when things don’t quite go to plan. If you want to check out the other posts from my Bremen trip you can do that here, here and here.
I arrived back at Bremen Airport about 1335 and, having checked in online, I headed straight to security, hoping to get through to the lounge quickly and have some time to relax before the flight. Unfortunately, whilst there wasn’t a particularly long queue it was SO slow and, unlike Stansted, Bremen still has the old-style scanners requiring you to take liquids and laptops out of bags, something that just seemed to take ages! All in all, it took about 20 minutes to get through to departures, so I was glad not to have left it to the last minute.
In the end there was still over two hours to go before my flight and so I was surprised to see the gate had already been announced, however with so long to go I stuck to my plan and headed to the lounge first to get some writing done. With about an hour until departure I made my way down to passport control and into the ‘non-Schengen’ bit of the terminal. There’s only toilets and a vending machine available once you’ve passed through passport control, its worth staying in the Schengen area as long as possible where there’s the usual range of shops and restaurants.
9H-QEQ, a 19-and-a-half-year-old Boeing 737-800 was the aircraft operating my flight. Originally delivered to Ryanair in 2005 as EI-DHT, it was re-registered to Ryanair’s subsidiary Malta Air in 2018. The inbound flight from Stansted landed at 1516 and just four minutes later, with the aircraft having barely made it to the stand, BoardingNotBoarding started to the top of the airbridge steps. Unfortunately, this was the most chaotic boarding experience I’ve ever had, and the airport staff really didn’t seem to know what they were doing. It took for a confused crowd to gather around the gate for them to start the separate queues for priority and non-priority passengers and then managed to start ‘boarding’ the non-priority first.
At 1533, with all of the inbound passengers off the aircraft, BoardingNotBoarding moved into phase 2 with us moved to the bottom of the aircraft steps, before being able to actually board a few minutes later. For the short flight back to Stansted I was in seat 7F, a right-hand side window seat, although I did note for future reference it hasn’t got great window placement with one at your shoulder and one in line with the seat in front. It did look like row 6 has good window placement, so hopefully I’ll end up there in future.
It took around 15 minutes for boarding to finish, although there was then seemingly a missing passenger as an announcement was made for someone to identify themselves if they were onboard and multiple headcounts were taken by the cabin crew. Eventually the door closed just before 1600 and as we began to pushback 10 minutes later the heavens opened and we were hit by one of the heaviest bursts of rain I’ve seen. Unfortunately, the aircraft itself seemed a bit shocked by the rain as well as water started to leak through the forward door and so we almost immediately were brought back onto stand for the door to be investigated.
For about 90 minutes we sat on the aircraft at the gate with the odd announcement updating us as the flight crew went back and forth with Ryanair’s engineers over the phone. At around 1730 the we were told that we would be taken off the aircraft and returned to the terminal and that a replacement aircraft would be coming from Stansted to rescue us, with our flight being delayed until 2100 (around a five-hour delay) as a result. Frustratingly it took another 30 minutes for us to be allowed off the aircraft as we had to wait for an inbound Turkish Airlines flight to be dealt with and we eventually had to go back through passport control ‘into’ Germany and then back through security to departures. This did allow people to stretch their legs outside of the terminal if they so wished, however I headed straight back through security as I expected a queue to form quite quickly.
With the delay, my plan of getting dinner on the way home from Stansted was out the window and so I headed to the only café that was still open and got myself a drink and a Bratwurst. Typically, just after I’d paid, a text came through from Ryanair with a €4 refreshment voucher due to the delay, not that you can get much for €4 these days. I settled down to wait out the delay with some music and book on my kindle, whilst also keeping a eye on Flightradar to see when our replacement aircraft departed. Surprisingly at 1930, with no new aircraft having departed Stansted, there was an announcement asking us to go to gate A06.
Confusingly, upon arrival at the gate, it was a Schengen gate where the Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna was boarding. Eventually the gate staff for our flight arrived and sent us on through passport control to A14 (our original gate). Apparently, the issue with our aircraft had been sorted as we were re-boarded onto that, getting back onboard at 1945. The second round of boarding seemed to be done about 2005, however it then looked as though the ground crew were removing bags, so I assume a couple of people didn’t end up travelling. The previously problematic front door was closed at 2015 and we pushed back a few minutes later.
As our taxi began, I was glad to be finally heading home and we took off from Bremen’s runway 27 at 2031, four and a half hours late. I was able to catch a glimpse of the Port of Bremen before we reached the bank of cloud that was covering northern Germany, and that was about it for a view for the rest of the flight. I did get a very small glimpse of us crossing a coastline around 2054; however, I have no idea what coastline this was! Less than an hour after taking off, the seatbelt sign came back on and we landed at Stansted at 2034, 63 minutes after taking off from Bremen and four and a quarter hours later than we should have been. Unfortunately, to further rub in the delay, we were parked on a remote stand at Stansted, alighting at 2044 onto buses and eventually getting to the terminal building at 2055.
Whilst the delay was frustrating, it is obviously better for Ryanair to be cautious when it comes to aircraft defects than risk it and something happen. Unfortunately, the updates provided by the crew were quite sparse and added to everyone’s frustration and throughout both boarding processes and the delay, the airport staff didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on. All the staff were friendly and polite, but I do feel both the normal processes and the handling of the delay could have been managed a lot better.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 3*
Service 3*
Punctuality 0*
Overall Rating 9/25 (read about my rating system here!)
Flights & Times 