Flights from and to Copenhagen

As København is not that far away, I thought about taking the train there. A quick search with Deutsche Bahn showed that a single trip would cost around 160 EUR and would take around ten hours. A reasonable surplus for being environmental friendly is worth paying for me, but there is a point where this surplus becomes outrageous. Then I researched flight connections from close by airports and the only affordable direct flights from Köln-Bonn airport are actually the cheapest ones operated by Ryanair.

The sole existence of a flight which costs 22 EUR is mind boggling. And I am aware that ultimately consumers have the power to shape what is offered. But how realistic is it to get enough people to take the train over the plane that politicians will end up putting fair taxes on flights and eventually make the train more affordable? I doubt that my choice really has a noticeable effect if the incentive of taking the flight are so high. So I took it.

In the weeks leading up to the departure I got a lot of emails from the airline suggesting that I buy some extras like check-in luggage, second carry-on suitcase, priority boarding, drinks and snacks on board. Also they urged me to book a hotel via their website. Hilariously they recommended traveling "in style" by booking a fancy car. It is calming to know that their targeting algorithms are so bad that they suggest a car to me while in København.

Packing

As I was in Poznań the week before I did not even bother to fully unpack my backpack and especially the toiletry kit. I am glad that I treated myself with a newer larger one with better internal organization as the one that I previously had. Packing the backpack went pretty quickly as this is now my fifth trip this year and the second one with only carry-on luggage.

Ryanair has a generous limit for the carry-on luggage. Their policy seems different from other airlines that I have flown with: In the most basic plan you can have a 10 kg bag and another small one as carry-on luggage. The large bag will be taken to the gate but then put into the cargo area of the plane and returned on the usual luggage claim. If you book an upgrade you can take both bags into the cabin. For such a short flight I do not really care whether my toothpaste rides in the cabin or the cargo area, also I do not care about the additional wait after landing. In total this meant that I could even fit a spare pair of pants and still had some space and weight left.

As the weather was supposed to be in the 15 C region with occasional rain I took my hiking boots instead of the usual sneakers. Also for walking longer distances the slightly stiffer sole is preferable.

Arrival

A day before the flight I checked in via the Ryanair app. It pestered me with upgrades that I could buy and supposedly other people in the plane have taken. I presume that this is where they make another heap of money from.

My flight was scheduled for 14:00 from Köln-Bonn Airport, so I could just take the bus around noon and still have enough buffer. This bus is very convenient as it parks pretty near the terminal. One trip costs a little less than 8 EUR when purchased via the SWB app. And being driven by car does not really save much time or hassle. It took me 35 minutes from bus stop to bus stop, so door to Terminal 2 might be 40 minutes.

The Köln-Bonn Airport is not so huge like the one in Frankfurt am Main and therefore going through security is a matter of five minutes.

For years one cannot take more than one liter of liquids and no filled container that is larger than 100 ml. I get that you shall be hindered in bringing large amounts of dangerous liquids into the cabin. The requirement on small containers is something that I do not understand. If it is to prevent mixing multiple things in a large container, it does not make sense that I can take my 1900 ml steel bottle. Either way, I dump out the water before I go through the security screening. On the other side I ask at one of the cafe booths to fill it back up with tap water. This has worked every time and I get around 1.5 liters of free water. Also I can tap myself on the back for saving the environment one plastic bottle before boarding a plane and making a big negative impact.

The place I got my refill was a "tapas & vino" bar. People were casually ordering beer and wine an 12:45. Technically it was after noon, but it still feels odd.

While waiting at the gate a Ryanair employee checked my boarding pass and put a tag on my backpack such that it would go into the cargo section of the plane. This is the second time that I do not have a printed boarding pass and only the one on my phone. This has worked just fine as well.

At the airport I saw again how amazingly inefficient a crowd can move. I just wanted to go down a flight of steps. It was only wide enough for three people. Still people managed to make everyone else wait on them by putting their suitcase into the floor right behind the stairs. Then it usually fell over and they arched down in time lapse to extend the handle. Repeat this for every second person. My favorite are people that start to walk down the stairs, realize that their beloved ones are not right next to them and pause to wait for them. This is amazingly inefficient and usually makes me lose hope to get around quickly.

On the trip in Utrecht I found great joy in writing the article alongside of the journey. Waiting at the gate for the boarding was a great opportunity to write this article. Though I much prefer the mechanical keyboard for composing text, the Gboard keyboard for Android with the swiping is not that bad after all. Also my laptop weighs over 2 kg and I just did not want to carry that with me, though it would have fitted into the bag.

Boarding took rather long as we waited in the hallway to be let out to the plane. I have the impression that they did this to have the flight in the boarded status and not be liable for delays later on. We got to look at the plane for a while:

Eventually we got to go to the plane. I put my large backpack onto one of the trailers. On this plane they used both doors to board, still people took ages to find their seats and store all their oversized luggage. I was actually quite happy with the window seat that I got assigned; the whole row was free when I boarded and I did not have to get up once.

The cabin was the least visually pleasing one of all planes that I have flown with. The seats are of marine color, the headrests in bright yellow. Perhaps that is similarly with the Netto supermarkets. There the typography is awfully bad and I cannot believe that it is sheer incompetence. They must be using a design that makes everything look cheap such that people think that it is cheap to buy there. The tegut markets have beautiful typography but people are actually deterred by this as they assume that it must be expensive even though it is normally priced. So maybe Ryanair intentionally makes their cabin visually unpleasant such that people do not think that the airline spend money on it.

Unlike Lufthansa and Eurowings, Ryanair does not seem to have a storage net in front of the seat and neither a safety card. The safety instructions are large stickers on the back of the headrests. This seems like a small thing but it certainly adds up with hundreds of seats in hundreds of airplanes; especially since the sticker cannot be taken off board by accident.

Also there was music playing during boarding. Between the songs the Ryanair slogan was announced. It had the same feel to it as waiting for a call center agent to pick up your call.

There was one lady with a very small child going up and down the hallway. By the screaming the child must have been in terror. Unfortunately she did not know which seat she was in so the kid had to be on her arm longer than necessary. She got the seat right behind me and the screaming was deafening. But once the seat belt was resolved the kid calmed down. Even the air pressure change was not a problem.

Takeoff is an amazing feeling, though I had two flights the week before and one flight each in the weeks after. Now that I have seen The Expanse, the acceleration reminds me of the astronauts getting pushed into their seats, injected with acceleration drugs and a swivel of the seat. I am not sure whether a commercial airline can accelerate so hard that people start to pass out. That is easy to achieve with a fighter jet and the Zero-G Airbus can also pull some g's, but a regular plane? I checked on Aviation Stack Exchange but did not find a matching question, perhaps I will ask eventually.

Right after takeoff I got to see various villages. It is amazing how rural Germany is when you leave the city. Maybe next year I do a bike trip from Bonn to the source of the Sieg river and get to see a bit more of rural Germany.

During the end of the flight is was announced that you could buy lottery tickets. They said that this money went to a charity and one could win a million EUR, a new car or "other cash prices". Then they stressed again that you help kids with your donation. One ticket is 2 EUR but you can get seven for 5 EUR.

This is a marvelous setup: There is the chance for a life-changing event but they do not give the likelihood. Psychologically people cannot process this information in a statistically meaningful way when the unlikely outcome is extreme. It is the same with terror attacks: They are more than life-changing but extremely unlikely in Germany. Still people fear them but are not scared of overweight. Also the focus on charity means that you do not have to feel bad if you do not win. And the two pricing models are viciously clever. If the chance to win was seven times higher and one ticket would cost 5 EUR, people would feel ripped off. But dilute the chance of winning and add a cheaper option to make it sound like a great deal.

I must admit that my brain also instantly thought that a million EUR would be awesome and that buying seven tickets was the clever choice to get a higher chance of winning. Also I could feel the excitement and anticipation kick in, epinephrine or serotonin perhaps? As they did not tell me the chance of winning it made no sense to buy a ticket. I guess putting 5 EUR into mutual funds makes more sense than gambling on having a million EUR and ending up losing 5 EUR.

The guy next to me bought a ticket and seemed to have lost in one part of the ticket. But the other thing said "Yes", so he had to then go online and check what he won. This is even worse, now you have to give them data before learning that you did not win. It does not shine a bright light on the airline, but if selling data helps children, there are worse causes to support.

On the return trip I have asked for the chances of winning, but the steward could not tell me. He assured me that it happens "sometimes". As they do not know, not many people are asking this.

Chris had warned me that the weather was not so great and I saw that online as well. Departure in Germany was with a nice blue sky, arrival in Copenhagen was with a cloudy sky.

The approach was a rather rough one, it seemed very windy. I have great respects for the pilots who can land a plane in any weather conditions. My humble attempts in Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 two decades ago were mostly really bad even under perfect conditions. There are likely many videos of landings available, but here is mine:

Getting off the plane took longer than necessary, like always. People seem to be unable to sense that they are in other people's way. I just kept sitting in my window seat until the corridor was free. I walked to the terminal and then had a long way to go to the baggage claim. It turned out to be the one furthest away from the exit as well, so I had to walk a lot on the airport.

The airport itself looks very warm and friendly, mostly due to the light wood applications:

Once you exit the is a large welcoming area and signs for metro, taxi and busses. Unfortunately all the Bycyklen bikes at the airport had been taken, so I just went to buy a metro ticket. They had a queue in front of all the ticket vending machines. It was easy to get a ticket and I payed 36 DKK for it, that is around 4.38 EUR. Compared to the bus ride in Bonn this was cheap.

The metro has doors on the platform as well. This means that it is predictable where exactly it comes to a halt and also you cannot fall onto the rails by accident. But they likely are more expensive to build.

Their next station indicator shows "Næste station", which is almost exactly like the German "Nächste Station", especially since "ä" is transcribed as "ae" when no umlauts are available. There are other words that are really close to Dutch. Knowing German, English and a bit of Dutch really makes reading Danish possible.

Return

On the return trip I spend quite some time waiting at the airport as I arrived too early. From a bench that I sat on I could see the self check-in machines where you can either scan your passport and print the boarding pass or scan the boarding pass and get a luggage tag.

In principle the latter was rather easy to use:

1. Press the name of the airline that you fly with.
2. Choose the language, English or Danish.
3. Put the bar code or QR code below the scanner.

Unfortunately this did not turn out straightforward for a significant share of people. Finding the right spot for the bar code took most people 15 to 45 seconds. Sometimes I got up and just showed them the right spot.

There was one lady who did not interact with the screen at all and just tried to put her boarding pass under the scanner. I approached her eventually and offered help. She was German and did not speak good English. When I talked her through the process she just stood there and did nothing. So I went ahead and pressed something on the screen and instructed her to do the next action. Eventually I checked her in and attached the baggage tag to her suitcase.

It is easy to blame the people for this. But it really is the design of the machine. There will be people who are unable to use even the best designed machine, but those cases should be rare. For these machines I think that some more user interface work is needed to get more people to use them confidently on the first try.