Flight Report : BA 935 Dusseldorf - London Heathrow
30 October 2026
16:45 - 17:10

Dusseldorf has been on my bucket list for quite some time. I've been here before. 20 years ago, my friend who was living in the Netherlands at the time suggested driving 2 hours there on a Friday night for a good ramen dinner. I thought it was a crazy idea, but after the meal, I agreed it was worth the journey. Dusseldorf has a large Japanese expat community so the Japanese food here is bound to be authentic and delicious. It's only an hour's flight from London, and and the fare was fairly reasonable at 170 pounds roundtrip. I had eaten a few good Japanese meals during my 3-night stay and would happily return for a regular pilgrimmage. After taking the S11 from the airport to the city, I wanted to try the new U80 to head back to the airport. The travel time is only a few minutes longer but still under 20 minutes from the city centre. My flight back to London was delayed anyway. This line just opened a month ago in early September, made possible by a 1.9km extension while the rest of the line uses pre-existing tracks. An additional U81 service operates between the airport and Messe during event days. While the train itself looked new, I didn't see any luggage racks but luckily it wasn't busy. During the day, the U80 runs at 20-minute intervals from the main station. The airport station was spacious and clean although it was super quiet. Where's everyone? Heading upstairs, I was surprised to find it didn't go right into the terminal like the S-bahn station, but in the middle of nowhere. I needed to walk outside to reach the arrivals entrance, a bit of an odd design for a new train line. German and Swiss airports tend to have supermarkets right on site. This one is not just a convenience store but has the full offering for a proper grocery shop. I suppose arriving passengers can stock up for the week here before heading home? Upstairs, the departures hall was quite airy and BA's 3 check-in counters are at the other end of the building. I recall all outports I've visited in Europe have this type of set up - 3 counters only. The kiosks worked for a lot of other airlines but not BA, although it didn't take long to get to an agent. I had checked in the day before online but wanted a paper boarding pass. The agent was friendly and offered to check my hand carry into the hold given it was a fairly full flight today. The agent had reminded me the entrance is on the other side of the terminal for the C gates since the counters were near the A/B gates. From the monitors scattered around the check-in area, the waiting time was about 15 minutes, which ticked down to 9 by the time I got to the entrance. It was now around 3:30pm. There was a small crowd snaking out from the security check but it didn't look so concerning on first appearance. However, the line didn't move much at all and there were times when we stopped for some 10 minutes without anyone moving. Initially, there wasn't any staff to manage the increasingly bigger glob of people but soon, people just squeezed into every available space. There are 3 separate doors into security after scanning the boarding pass and with so many people stuck and starting to worry about missing their flights, things got less civil. By the time I was able to see what was happening at the security check itself, it became apparent that the machine for the humans kept spitting out errors for every woman that went through. Then she needed a pat-down by a staff and until that was done, the next person could not pass through. The scanner for the bags weren't doing too well either with the belt not moving most of the time. I didn't trigger any exceptions but what was next became even more worrying. Passport control is just outside security and the line couldn't even fit into the cordoned area. Europeans could use the kiosks and 2 manned counters, which were mostly empty. I still don't understand why after going through EES, we can't use these kiosks to exit the EU. There were just a few manned counters for the non-European line and a number of people who couldn't speak English were trying to cut through as their flights to Turkey were coming up. There was 1 surly staff trying to fish out the Europeans for the kiosks but she offered no sympathies or help to the others whose flights were departing soon, which included mine. By now, stuck in the immigration line, I checked the flight tracking website and noted the inbound flight from London had just landed after a delayed departure of around 45 minutes, so I was still comfortable but starting to get edgy. The passengers bound for Turkey were increasing getting irritated and pushed ahead hoping to cut the line. I saw among them Pegasus and A Jet boarding passes. I had let an older lady through but it seems her village was trying to do so as well and that would mean missing my flight if I became charitable. So I held my ground and made sure nobody could get pass even though they tried as the line turned around each corner. It did take some time once at the immigration counter to get stamped out as well. The officer had to wait some time to click things through before completing my exit procedure. It seems an issue with the computer system itself and as a result, all the passengers get backed up waiting in line. EES is still not kind to non-European passengers and this type of ordeal really makes me re-think whether to visit the continent in the near future. By the time I finally cleared immigration, it was 5pm. This was one of the most awful departure experiences in memory, taking 90 minutes to clear security and immigration. Luckily, the flight was delayed and they were only getting ready to board by the time I reached the gate. Maybe the flight delay was a blessing in disguise. I probably wouldn't have made it had it left on-time. The rest of the departures hall was nice with a good range of shops and restaurants but I was no longer in the mood to explore. I noticed on the screens the gate had changed and there was a big crowd seated and ready to go by the time I arrived. I wonder how could everyone get through security and immigration with those lines and thought I must've missed a hack or back-door using this airport. Boarding was called and we were held on the bridge again for a while before being able to board. I had marked a right window seat again hoping for aerials coming into London but with the delay, it would be well past sunset already. The cockpit announcement explained there was intense fog in the UK this morning and the plane was late coming in from Glasgow, so this crew was delayed an hour to leave London for Dusseldorf. We pushed back 25 minutes late at 5:35pm for a short taxi, taking off 9 minutes later for the 55-minute journey to Heathrow. With darkness approaching, I turned my focus to the for-purchase menu. Similar to my other short-haul flights with BA, we got a snack and a small bottle of water. The cockpit announcement before descent was lengthy with a remark that we would get a good view on the left side. We were flying past London to the north and would loop around for landing. So my right window seat wouldn't have much luck tonight. We landed at 5:38pm and pulled into the B pier. From here on, it was an easy train ride into the main building and immigration was far smoother here. I think I spent only about 15 minutes waiting for an officer and my bag came out quite quickly as well. The Heathrow arrival experience was far more pleasant. BA keeps its customers informed with frequent messages about its delays. Despite both the outbound and inbound flights being delayed, I can sympathize with weather reasons. With the horrible departure experience out of Dusseldorf, I'm going to think twice about using this airport again. Too bad BA dropped its Cologne flight earlier this year, because I had considered flying into one and out the other before.