We arrived around 90 minutes before our scheduled departure to Stockholm believing we had plenty of time. However, the chaos that met us inside the terminal told otherwise. The waves from the wildcat strike in Denmark were felt in Oslo. We had no hope of checking in at the manned counters and make it to the gate on time which meant that we gave up our original plan to check our bags through to LCY. Even the queue to bag drop was painfully long. It is blatantly obvious that someone is not paying attention at Oslo Airport. The designed terminal capacity was breached during the autumn of last year (17 million passengers per year), and will take until 2012 before the planned Terminal 2 will open. The situation is even worse for aircraft parking – there just is not enough stands for overnight parking.

Frustrations and late arrivals aside, we made it through and were at the gate as it opened. Boarding went like a breeze and since our apprentice was one of the last to board our flight, he rightfully ended up with a middle seat - not the window seat printed on his boarding card. That should teach him!

The aircraft was a Boeing 737-683 from SAS Sweden. Our aircraft was pushed out from gate 45 10 minutes late, the engines were fired up, and we started to taxi in a big circle around the whole terminal to reach the end of runway 01L.

  


Two other SAS Group members were at neighbouring gates - a Blue1 MD-90 heading for Helsinki and an Estonian 737 heading for Tallinn
       
 


North of the terminal we saw the SAS Braathens Star Alliance 737-883


With the NATO foreign ministers in town, there was a lot of interesting aircraft parked around. The Russian foreign minister’s Rossija Il-86M RA-86540. Notice the pogostick between the engines. We were now out on taxiway November and heading for Alpha 1.


At Alpha 1 about to enter the runway - over at the cargo ramp a UPS 763F in new colours, an Icelandair 752F flying for TNT and an old coloured DHL Airbus A300 are parked for the day.


In the air and looking down on the Gardermoen Air Base apron - parked are a number of foreign minister rides - US State Secretary Rice's brand new BBJ is parked on the taxiway to the south.
 

 

Airborne heading for Arlanda. As a teaser to the new SAS in air service starting on 1 May, we were served a free beakfast with freshly baked rolls, cold cuts of ham, cheese, tomato, a glass orange juice, and tea/coffee. This “wonderful” breakfast will be served free for Economy Extra passengers from 1 May (on flights leaving before nine in the morning) and can be bought for regular Economy passengers. A full warm breakfast was served to the business class passengers, but riding very much back seat we had to settle for the smell. Talking about smell and taste at altitude, our tea was completely tasteless. One wonders if SAS Sweden only serves brown tap water?

   Having finished the "tea" we started our descent into Arlanda. This flight was cleared for a so called green landing - a continuous descent without the intermediate level stops. This type of approach uses less fuel and is better for the environment. We touched down around five minutes behind schedule on runway 01R and taxied via Whisky and Zulu to our gate at Terminal 5. A few minutes later we were walking through the Arlanda Mall to collect our luggage.
   
 


The aircraft we flew with from Oslo to Stockholm - Boeing 737-683 LN-RPW
 
       
  2007-07-07