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Yesterday evening I came back from a brief business trip to London. When we were nearly at Krakow the pilot informed us that there was snow in Krakow. We started to land and although I wasn’t sitting by the window I could see it was snowing heavily as everytime the light on the wing of the plane flashed I could see the snow! The approach to landing was a bit bumpy but otherwise normal. The wing flaps were lowered to bring the plane down and then suddenly the engine roared into life and we started to climb again. At first I was a bit worried that were going to go and land in a different city or there was some mistake made when landing as visibility was so low. The pilot informed us that there was too much snow on the runway to land safely. So we had to circle for about 15 minutes until we got confirmation from Air Traffic Control that it was safe to land.
All of this would have been fine except that I was sitting next to the worse passenger ever! The flight was only 2 hours but he kept getting up to go to the toilet. When we were circling of course no one could get up as the seatbelt sign was on and the plane could land at any minute without warning but despite this he still wanted to go to the toilet (again!) and to my surprise the cabin crew let him after a minute or two to find out. So I had to undo my seatbelt and stand up while everyone else was safely belted in! (Remember we were flying in snow so turbulence was likely!) The guy went to the toilet and then I heard a member of the cabin crew say we were about to land. Well I was still beltless and waiting for this guy to return to his seat. I was quite worried but luckily he came back as soon as the cabin crew told him.

We then went into the approach again and this time landed safely. But we still couldn’t get off the plane as although the runway had been hastily cleared of snow, the taxi area (where the passengers get off) hadn’t, so the pilot told us he will be go very slowly towards the gate. Once we got there, there was a further delay while they cleared the snow off the steps down from the plane. Eventually we all disembarked!

Below is a photo just after I got off the plane. I think it will be a while before I fly in snow again (at least I hope it will!).