Sunday, from Frankfurt to home and tulips....

We had an early start on Sunday and got to Frankfurt airport 2 hours before our mid morning flight. We were flying business class because I have had points that I haven’t used for 12 years. I buy a few miles every two years to keep the points alive but decided I should just use them. 

So, we dropped off our bags, having checked in on line and got through passport control but there was no security check at this point. We thought that was a bit strange but had a wander round duty free and then thought we better find our gate just to make sure we knew where it was. So, with over an hour to go we saw our gate and the security check was just in front of it with only a very few people queuing. We decided to grab a cuppa as there didn’t appear to be anything on the gate side for a drink and we knew we would have to throw away our water prior to the security check.
As we were drinking our tea I suddenly noticed the security queue building up dramatically. We abandoned our tea and joined the queue with maybe about 15 people in front of us. The economy queue had suddenly grown to about 50 people. Then we realised each person was taking 4 to 5 minutes to put their stuff in the black tray to go through security. At this point we started to panic. We had 45 minutes before our flight and we were literally 50 feet from the gate but we had to get through this very slow security check…..argh! Now we are used to putting the kindle and the phone in the tray, toiletries separate in the little see through bag, maybe take off our belts. This security person was requesting everything electrical in the tray, hair dryer, hair tongs, chargers for phones, chargers for cameras, camera as well as cardigans being removed (never seen that before). Because many of the people had suitcases with them they were having to delve around in the case for items that they had assumed would not be coming out till they were home, hence the additional time per person. Then the security person on our side started putting people ahead of us in the queue who were going to Heathrow….which was also where we were going!!!! Once everyone started to realise what items the security wanted to see they started opening bags and cases and having all the items to hand and we got to our gate about 15 minutes before the plane was due to leave. In the end it left the gate about 20 minutes late and I have no idea if some people actually missed the flight due to the security check. If we had been in the economy queue I feel we would have missed it so I am glad I chose this flight to use my air miles.  I have since looked up Frankfurt Airport’s facebook page and a couple of message boards and this seems to have been a problem for some weeks with many people missing flights and talk of 90  minutes to get through security. So if anyone is using that airport in the near future I would recommend finding out exactly where the security check is for your gate as soon as you get past passport control and then taking advantage of a short queue if you see one as it suddenly grows and also allowing much more time than you normally would do so for the security check. Obviously we could have avoided this stress if only we had just gone straight to the gate and I would like others to learn from our experience if they find themselves in Frankfurt.