The shortest jumbo flight ever.

As the engines spooled up and down the 747 punched its way through the mist and clouds sliding down the glide slope into SFO. Then the engines suddenly generate their pretake off roar, the nose points up and I gripped the seat rest as the landing is aborted.

The pilot comes on 'For those among you who didn't realise that we're climbing and not landing, had to go abort the landing so we're going around. Nothing to worry about I'll be back in a second'

Apart from the engines the cabin is very quite. Finally the engines slow down and we level out.

'Hi everyone this is the captain. Sorry about that but the air traffic control got that all wrong and we got too close the plane landing in front of us. Well we haven't got much fuel, and the weather is getting worse so we're going to divert to Oakland - I'll talk to again once we're on the ground'

This time we land no problems.. we taxi to a quiet corner of the apron.

'Hi your captain again can everyone stay in our seats. Homeland security will want to come on board to make sure every thing's ok. Also there are no facilities here for us, so we're going to refuel and fly back over to SFO'.

Now if you look at Google earth you can see that SFO and OAK are only 5 miles apart, separated by the bay. This is probably going to be some sort of record for number of people commuting between Oakland the San Fransisco in one vehicle.

As I look out of window, SUV are driving around the plane, parking up and shining lights through the aircraft windows. I'm not sure what they thought they could see....

'This is the chief steward, they cannot find any steps so Homeland security cannot get on board, so if you want to stretch you legs please do.'

Roll forward 60 minutes..

As the engines spooled up and down the 747 punched its way through the mist and clouds sliding down the glide slope into SFO. Then the engines suddenly generate their pretake off roar, the nose points up and I gripped the seat rest as the landing is aborted.

Again we've been given the go round by SFO air traffic control.

'Hi this is your pilot if I hadn't seen for my self I wouldn't have believed it but we've told to go around again but no worries it all under control'

Roll forward 10 minutes

We're on the ground. Except we're on the short runway. We slowed down like a fighter on an aircraft carrier catching an arrested wire. Still we're here - only two hours late.

As we taxied a bazaar game of one up manship started between the crew...

'This is the pilot - after flying for BA for 10 years I've only had go round 4 times and two of those were today'
'This is your captain - after flying for BA for 17 years I've only had go round 7 times and two of those were today' He also sounded the evening events had led to him missing a hot date and he was off to air traffic control to exact some revenge - statements such as 'not knowing what there doing', 'out of depth' may have passed hs lips.
'This is your chief steward - after flying to 22 years ( well that should 22 years be serving drinks and telling passengers to put their seat up) and that's only the second and third time I've had to go around.'

For the record that was my forth and fifth- Hongkong, Copenhagen, London City but who's boasting.