Friday 15th May 2026 saw us waking up at the Crowne Plaza at Heathrow’s Terminal 4, ready to start a trip we had been looking forward to since we first started planning it 18 months earlier. For the next 16 days we would be exploring some of the countries that make up the Nordics, with stays in Finland, Norward and Sweden all in the plan. But before we could start exploring these amazing countries, we first had to head in that direction, and what better way to start a trip of this magnitude than with a flight with Finnair in Business Class from Heathrow to Helsinki onboard one of their flagship Airbus A350s.

Having had an interesting and yet chilled day exploring Gothenburg, I was back at the airport nice and early ready to catch my flight back to the UK. As with the flight out, I’d be flying home with Ryanair onboard one of their Boeing 737-800s on one of the last flights of the day to depart the Swedish airport. But before we got to the flying, I needed to make my way through the airport formalities and hopefully not get waylaid by the now infamous EES border controls.

With my trip to Barcelona and Andorra having been a month earlier, and our big trip to the Nordics not for another few weeks, I decided that April was the perfect time for squeeze in an extreme day trip. Having trawled Skyscanner for the best combination of price and flight times, I had settled on a destination that would help build up my excitement for our upcoming Nordics trip. And so, early on a Wednesday morning in April, I was doing my semi-regular drive down the M11 towards Stansted, ready to catch a Ryanair flight to Gothenburg, Sweden.

Back in March, with a few days off work, it was time for another trip. This one would be starting as many do, with a flight from London Heathrow, however, would be slightly different as I was fortunate enough to be flying with British Airways (BA) in Club Europe. Having used some Avios points to upgrade myself to BA’s European business class product, it would be interesting to see how my experience differed compared to my various flights recently with the airline in their economy class Euro Traveller cabin. And so, on a Monday in March, I was at Heathrow once again, ready to fly to Barcelona.

After a fun day of avgeekery and tourism in Paris, it was time to head home and, as with our flight to Paris earlier in the day, we’d be flying back from Charles De Gaulle to Luton with easyJet. Having had an early start and a full-on day, we were both knackered and so got to the airport around 1820, some 3 hours and 15 minutes before our flight. This gave us plenty of time to get through security and passport control without having to stress, and hopefully some time to relax and grab some food before departure.

Having been back from my Meander to Moldova for about a month, I was getting Wanderlust and so on a random Wednesday in February I headed to London Luton Airport ready to catch a short flight across the English Channel to Paris. Unusually I’d have some company for this extreme day trip, as my dad was joining me for the day, with a plan of seeing both some of the city and ticking off an item from my AvGeek bucket list. We had planned on doing this trip via Eurostar, allowing us both to avoid a late night drive back from Luton, however the cost was extortionate by the time we went to book and so instead, we had a flight to catch, and easyJet were doing the honours from their home airport as we headed to Paris Charles de Gaulle.