Up at 5am today to catch the 8am flight back to Gatwick after a wonderful weekend in Helsinki. My supersaver flight. £30. Such a blinking bargain. The airport bus was full of sleepyheads.

“Ah, I’ve found what I’ve been looking for…!” announced the driver after 20 minutes or so. “The airport. I stop at Terminal 1 first and then Terminal 2.”

The bus emptied out at Terminal 1. I waited on board wondering what all the fun was at 1.
“Er, excuse me,” said comedy driver getting back on board. “Where are you going?”
“Terminal 2”, I said.
“This is Terminal 2. You’d better get off or I’ll take you back to Helsinki…”
Blimey. Where was Terminal 1? The check in machine spat my booking reference out and told me to go to the help desk. I queued for ages with a few other people who had also fallen foul of the machine. When it was my turn, the woman looked completely perplexed and called for help.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“No, no. Not at all. The system is very slow, that’s all.”

The second woman called for a third woman as the queue behind me got longer. I turned round at one point and did a ‘Sorry guys, some sort of system error’ shrug to the grumpy looking passengers. They blanked me.

After a few more minutes and a lot of heated chatter and jabbing the screen, the third woman cracked the problem.

“This ticket is for yesterday” she said, triumphantly.
“OMG. No way. What date is it today..?” I yelped, looking around for a floating calendar. She flourished the ticket at me.
“Look.”

November. Not yesterday. Not even close.

The three women, clearly relieved their system wasn’t faulty, pointed me in the direction of the Norwegian Air hidden service for losers who can’t book flights properly, two floors below ground level. In the dark space I found two guys with Norwegian Air logos on their t-shirts playing Pokemon (don’t) Go. They politely told me to get lost. There is no standby on Norwegian Air.

Back above ground I had to suck it up and buy a single ticket home. Flying with SAS. Leaving nine hours later via Copenhagen. A five hour trip.

From Terminal 1.

A brighter moment from yesterday: the Sibelius monument.

Postscript: It turns out the cheapest flight back was business class. Luckily an eagle eyed SAS guy noticed some marking on my boarding pass and told me. I’ve now been in the SAS lounge for 8 hours and 20 minutes now. With cheeky white wine on tap. Funny times.