All flights to and from manila suspended.

Yeah that was not fun, I was in the line ready to check-in, priority lane around 5pm Sunday kids watching me from the food court above check-in area B and suddenly a voice behind me says stop to the girls checking tickets before the queue to the desks, then a Filipino KLM employee starts explaining something to a bunch of travelers in front of me and eventually I get to ask him what's happened.

He explains that something happened at the tower, so no comms from the airport to any plane but he is not that clear about it, essentially a power problem with Air Traffic Control as far as I could tell, I spoke to the same guy back on 30th May and he was very helpful back then a bit less so this time.

So I am making hand gestures to my son that the flight is cancelled and eventually walk away from check-in and go up the elevator to the food court and tell them that I'm there for an unknown additional amount of time, at this point I am going to be an overstay so we go to the BI office in Terminal 3 where I explain and ask if it will be a problem, they tell me it will be fine it's not my fault.

But on Monday I eventually reach Immigration after queuing for over 2.5 hours and I explain that I am an involuntary overstay and the girl has to go take my passport and original ticket to her supervisor for permission to let me through, I mean 270 flights cancelled and the staff still don't know how to deal with someone who had been in the country for 30 days when the flights were cancelled.

KLM rebooked me on Kuwait Airways, an utter s*h*i*t*e airline and route and via Terminal 1, nice to see it again but the refurb has changed absolutely nothing about it and when I got to gate 4 the Kuwait staff inspected every single bag of every single passenger and the flight was delayed over 1 hour, lost my extra options and hand baggage allowance.

Horrible experience but I got to talk to a nice English bloke in the check-in queue with his large family, another HGV driver, with a wife who is an accountant and who buys and renovates properties over there, got a lot of good info from him, Trev was his name.

The Kuwait Airlines flight was horrible, I make an exception when travelling and I do enjoy a beer or wine but the flight and airport are dry and the delay in Manila was so long I had no time to relax.

So I will never voluntarily fly Kuwait Airways using my own money and making my own booking, my baggage did arrive in Manchester even though my connection was so tight I was boarding as soon as I arrived at the gate in Kuwait but I was not confident that It would arrive although very happy that it did.

Absolutely knackered by it all, and back at work first thing tomorrow.

Happy new year everyone!

That was my guess, interesting to see it confirmed.