As I approach my 250th flight, I can’t help but fear that the experience – even of premium cabins – has become routine. Last year I didn’t sample any new airlines, nor travel in any unfamiliar aircraft. More generally, a third of my flights have been with BA, and my top four airports feature in 75% of itineraries. Looking through my logs, I realised that truly novel flights – those where I was unfamiliar with the airline, the aircraft, and both airports – were extremely rare.
Everyone who has flown has one, their first: in my case, London Stansted to Oslo Torp on a Ryanair 737, a trip I recently repeated. I’d wager very few people have a novel second flight – most likely, it’s just the reverse of your first, perhaps with a different type of plane but probably the same carrier.
My third flight was novel – Gatwick to Edinburgh on Easyjet, who operate Airbuses in contrast to Ryanair’s Boeing fleet. My fourth almost was, travelling to Bristol on a BA Connect Embraer E145 – except it departed from Edinburgh. My first few years of flying were low cost, split largely between Easyjet and Ryanair; by the time I started encountering new airlines, it was on familiar routes.
Thus it took until 2010, and my 46th flight, to log another novelty. Somehow I hadn’t passed through Heathrow or flown on mainline BA prior to then, so a trip to Seattle on a Boeing 747 was a particularly significant milestone. Since then both the airport and the airline have become my most used, thus preventing opportunities for novel flights even as I racked up new destinations or aircraft. On the occasions I tried new airlines, chances are it was out of an airport I had recently arrived at on a BA service from London.
As a result, my most recent novel combination – and only my fourth – was almost a decade ago: flight 104, from Glasgow to Barra on a Loganair-operated (albeit Flybe marketed and liveried) Twin Otter. This was an experience I had actively sought out as an aviation curiosity, intrigued by the beach landing. Crucially, all my flights to Scotland had arrived at Edinburgh, leaving Glasgow unfamiliar – yet easily reached by overland travel.
Moving from Bristol to Exeter presented me with the chance to claim another novelty. Although my new local airport, EXT, is small and only serves a handful of (mainly domestic) destinations, many of those would be new to me, as would the regional airlines plying the routes. I considered putting together a trip purely to avoid a missed opportunity, with Aer Lingus franchisee Emerald Airlines the front runner; but I’m happy that today’s trip arose naturally.
To get to Sark you have to first get to Guernsey, and whilst there are ferries from Portsmouth, the Bailiwick has its own airline, Aurigny, operating a handful of ATR 72s between the island and airports across the UK, including three flights a week from Exeter. My only previous trip to the Channel Islands was to Jersey on BA, and this would be my first encounter with any ATR aircraft, so all the novelty boxes were ticked.
Although there are buses to Exeter airport, for two people with luggage a taxi is the obvious choice: 25 minutes and £22.50 from my house, so it should be similar from St David’s train station and even quicker and cheaper from the city centre.
We’d arrived at 2 for our half 3 departure, but that was overkill. From kerb to airside took five minutes, including bag drop and a slight delay in security where I had to have my hands swabbed – also a novel experience! I was reminded of Bristol airport when I first started using it almost 20 years ago: just five gates, plus a couple of cafes, the obligatory WH Smiths, and a duty-free store. A bar and viewing terrace upstairs were already shut, and the Moorland Café – where we settled in given crowds in the main seating area – closed at 3pm. That didn’t matter for us, as a minute later boarding was called.
The ATR-72 is a turboprop aircraft, configured with 2-2 seating for (as the name suggests) 72 passengers. I’d not flown on a prop plane since 2014’s Hebridean hops, so I was imagining something old and shaky. However, today’s frame, G-OGFC, was delivered in 2020 – quite the contrast to Loganair’s De Haviland Twin Otters, which are older than me. It was a quieter ride than expected, perhaps helped by choosing a seat in the penultimate row.
We had everyone aboard with 7 minutes to go and pushed back exactly on schedule. With a 31 minute flight time – Exeter is the closest UK airport to Guernsey – I was surprised that there was a trolley service, with soft, hot and alcoholic drinks plus snacks available for purchase, alongside duty-free spirits and cigarettes. There was also an in-flight magazine – with a feature on Sark which included a picture of Scarlett!
But the main entertainment was through the window. On departure we had great views of the south Devon coastline from Exeter to Dartmouth, but even better was to come on our approach to Guernsey. Although the airport is on the west of the island, we approached from the east, making a survey of Sark from 3,000 feet before an even lower fly-by of Herm.
We touched down a minute early, and with no border formalities – Guernsey is part of the common travel area – the only hold-up was waiting for our checked baggage (which arrived in about a quarter of an hour). Several bus lines operate to the main hub of the island, St Peter Port, taking less than 20 minutes and costing £1.60.
This is my shortest ever (at 97 miles), and my first with Scarlett. Despite its brevity, I suspect it will remain memorable for a long time – although I hope it won’t take a decade to engineer a sixth novelty…
