Fun and games at Heathrow
I awoke bright and early (well, early, anyway) on Saturday morning this weekend and toddled off to Geneva airport. There was a big family party in Coventry, you see, which I didn't really want to miss. The flights seemed to have been getting better, with increased numbers of aeroplanes taking off on Thursday and Friday, and after all BA were publishing lists of cancelled flights which didn't include mine.
The party was very good.
Less good was getting back to Heathrow on Sunday, four hours in advance of the flight time, to discover that all European flights had been cancelled. This was a decision taken late on Saturday night when the chaos reached bursting point at Heathrow and seemed understandable, so we were directed to join the queue for rebooking, happening in a tent in the car park.
Well, after three and a half hours and a goodly amount of rain and hail, we reached the front of the queue. I should say at this point that the BA/BAA staff were doing everything in their power to help people with free drinks, nibbles, raincoats etc. What surprised me a little was the way the rebookings were being handled - one arrived in the tent and milled around until finding a BA employee in a yellow jacket, who would listen to your story and then ring up the bookings desk on their mobile 'phone. Given that we were about 100m from the terminal, it seemed odd to me that they hadn't just run out Ethernet and connected up booking terminals to be used in the aforementioned tent, but I'm sure they knew what they were doing. Anyway, we got a reservation for a flight to Basel on Monday evening, although a hotel room wasn't forthcoming since there simply weren't enough to go round. Having British accents, not accompanying small children and not being in transit put us fairly low down the priority list as regarded hotels, which is fair enough. As it turned out, we went to stay with some friends - lovely to see them, but a shame we had to drop in rather unannounced.
Monday arrived and we spent a jolly morning at the Science Museum, booking a hotel room in Basel for that evening on the way. We decided to arrive back at Heathrow early (four and a half hours early this time) to minimise problems and arrived to find a new strategy at work: in order to prevent rugby scrums at security, they were keeping everyone outside until their flight was called, one to two hours before takeoff. This seemed like a good idea... until we heard that they weren't letting anyone inside for our new flight, since there was no chance of getting them through security in time.
Back to the queue for us, then (mercifully shorter and dryer today), where we got booked on a flight on Tuesday morning for Basel. Geneva was still apparently out of the question, but anything getting us back in Swissland would do. I think it would take nuclear holocaust to upset the Swiss railway timetable, and even then they'd publish an emergency service timetable running weeks into the future. We also got a hotel for the night, since there was no way we were going to be able to travel back to the airport for an 0830 flight. This, thankfully, left with us on it and I was back in work for Tuesday afternoon, coming straight from the airport.
Conclusions? Well, all the staff at Heathrow were brilliant - I'm sure they didn't want to be there either and they were obviously doing their best. Most of the other punters were pretty good, too. There were a few people who seemed to think that SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY would magically make their flight run, but not too many. The priority system seemed to be working quite well - it was never formally stated, but you could tell that they were looking after the people who needed it most. It seemed like BA hadn't really thought about it in advance, though, which is a little odd. I would have thought that they'd have rolled out contingency plan A and had something a little better than the mobile phone plan, although to be fair it did work very well. Maybe it really is the best way of doing it.
Methinks that Eurostar will do well out of the current baggage restrictionsand delays, though, as British travellers are tempted to get the train to Paris and an ongoing flight...
The party was very good.
Less good was getting back to Heathrow on Sunday, four hours in advance of the flight time, to discover that all European flights had been cancelled. This was a decision taken late on Saturday night when the chaos reached bursting point at Heathrow and seemed understandable, so we were directed to join the queue for rebooking, happening in a tent in the car park.
Well, after three and a half hours and a goodly amount of rain and hail, we reached the front of the queue. I should say at this point that the BA/BAA staff were doing everything in their power to help people with free drinks, nibbles, raincoats etc. What surprised me a little was the way the rebookings were being handled - one arrived in the tent and milled around until finding a BA employee in a yellow jacket, who would listen to your story and then ring up the bookings desk on their mobile 'phone. Given that we were about 100m from the terminal, it seemed odd to me that they hadn't just run out Ethernet and connected up booking terminals to be used in the aforementioned tent, but I'm sure they knew what they were doing. Anyway, we got a reservation for a flight to Basel on Monday evening, although a hotel room wasn't forthcoming since there simply weren't enough to go round. Having British accents, not accompanying small children and not being in transit put us fairly low down the priority list as regarded hotels, which is fair enough. As it turned out, we went to stay with some friends - lovely to see them, but a shame we had to drop in rather unannounced.
Monday arrived and we spent a jolly morning at the Science Museum, booking a hotel room in Basel for that evening on the way. We decided to arrive back at Heathrow early (four and a half hours early this time) to minimise problems and arrived to find a new strategy at work: in order to prevent rugby scrums at security, they were keeping everyone outside until their flight was called, one to two hours before takeoff. This seemed like a good idea... until we heard that they weren't letting anyone inside for our new flight, since there was no chance of getting them through security in time.
Back to the queue for us, then (mercifully shorter and dryer today), where we got booked on a flight on Tuesday morning for Basel. Geneva was still apparently out of the question, but anything getting us back in Swissland would do. I think it would take nuclear holocaust to upset the Swiss railway timetable, and even then they'd publish an emergency service timetable running weeks into the future. We also got a hotel for the night, since there was no way we were going to be able to travel back to the airport for an 0830 flight. This, thankfully, left with us on it and I was back in work for Tuesday afternoon, coming straight from the airport.
Conclusions? Well, all the staff at Heathrow were brilliant - I'm sure they didn't want to be there either and they were obviously doing their best. Most of the other punters were pretty good, too. There were a few people who seemed to think that SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY would magically make their flight run, but not too many. The priority system seemed to be working quite well - it was never formally stated, but you could tell that they were looking after the people who needed it most. It seemed like BA hadn't really thought about it in advance, though, which is a little odd. I would have thought that they'd have rolled out contingency plan A and had something a little better than the mobile phone plan, although to be fair it did work very well. Maybe it really is the best way of doing it.
Methinks that Eurostar will do well out of the current baggage restrictionsand delays, though, as British travellers are tempted to get the train to Paris and an ongoing flight...