With six and a half months left on my passport, I had decided that there was just enough time to maximise its use and take another trip before that pesky, post-Brexit, six-month expiry rule kicked in. Therefore, with a cheap hostel booked and some equally cheap flights, I was up and heading to Luton at 0400 ready for my flight to Krakow with Wizz.

Having arrived from Prague into the airline’s largest hub at Zurich, my onward flight, and the last of my trip, was of course with Swiss International Air Lines. When planning my itinerary, I’d tried to balance giving myself enough time for any connections, whilst also attempting to get onboard different aircraft for each leg.

After a very busy few days ticking off three new countries, exploring three new cities and travelling on three international trains it was time to break the run of threes and catch the first of two flights that would get me back to Heathrow to end my trip. Despite booking my flights with Lufthansa, I was actually flying with a different member of the Lufthansa Group, Swiss International Air Lines, commonly known simply as Swiss.

Almost exactly 20 months since my last flight, I was finally heading to an airport ready for a trip abroad, with this one being a multi-country, week-long exploration of Central Europe covering Czechia, Hungary & Slovakia. But before I got to tick off any new countries, I had a journey to Heathrow and two flights with Lufthansa to complete.

After a great few days in and around the Dutch capital, we were back at the city’s Schiphol airport ready for our flight back to Birmingham with KLM. Having dropped our hand luggage off for check-in and spent a bit of time up at the viewing terrace, we headed through security and into the main departure lounge.

Just five days after returning from Dublin, I was back at Birmingham airport to fly to Amsterdam and try another new airline, KLM. KLM is the Dutch flag carrier and in 2019 celebrated its 100th birthday, with the airline being the oldest in continuous operation with the same name. KLM operates up to five return flights a day from its Amsterdam hub to Birmingham and we were booked onto the early afternoon departure, which is generally operated by KLM subsidiary, KLM Cityhopper with one of their Embraer E-jets.