Short-haul flights are so much fun. Not. As mentioned earlier, my flight out was delayed a little. The one back was worse - pretty much as soon as I got to the gate, they flashed up "delayed 45 minutes...". Three quarters of an hour after the scheduled departure time, we were still sitting in the departure lounge, and the message said the same (and that pisses me off as much as the delay itself - I can understand how bad weather and striking baggage handlers can cause delays and there's not a huge amount that the airline can do about it, but how much effort does it take to update a sign or make an announcement so that we, the cattlepassengers know what's going on?). Eventually we were bussed out to the 'plane (propellers - how quaint!) and I noted its registration code was G-JEDL - certainly the force is not strong with this one. We finally arrived in Birmingham over an hour and a half late (and without so much as a complimentary drink), by which point it was too late to catch a train to anywhere useful (my admittedly poor initial planning did allow for up to an hour of delayage), and rather than trying to find a taxi willing to take me to Oxford (doubtless at vast expense) I ended up checking into a hotel for a few hours before catching an early train this morning. As I'm sure my fellow Brits have guessed, the railway companies jumped at this opportunity to prove that they can be every bit as useless as the airlines - the direct train to Oxford wasn't, and the one to Coventry was late, then later, finally arrived, sat around for a few minutes after I boarded before expiring completely. Fortunately the second attempt was more successful, and the second-leg train failed to deliver the coup-de-grace by being sufficiently late that I still managed to catch it.
Public Transport Review of the Year
- Flights (Long Haul)
- I've done more than ten of these, and without a single memorable delay.
- Flights (Short Haul)
- Out of six flights, two botch ups are described above, and the domestic legs of my trip to the states for Nimbus featured a surprise cancellation, a broken jetway and an oops you're delayed so much you'll have to fly a completely different route.
- Trains
- In addition to the above, there were signalling problems at Bletchley, plus the strike which completely prevented
hermorrine and I from going to Mac200bage. There may have been the odd vaguely-on-time train in there somewhere, but I doubt it.
- Busses and Coaches
- Over the course of the year I've been on countless busses and dozens of coaches to London/Heathrow/Gatwick. No particularly noteworthy delays.
I'm sure interesting conclusions can be drawn from this... 
