Last Tuesday, my family and I ended a 15 year expat life, returning to Ireland for family reasons. Our final journey was from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Dublin with a connecting flight at Heathrow. Here's what happened:
1. At Larnaca airport check-in we ask if we can collect our baby buggy at Heathrow as we will need to change terminals and our youngest is just one year old. The buggy is tagged to Heathrow but not Dublin (first little alarm bell merely buzzes in my ear).
2. Stewardesses on the BA flight tell us there is a three-day old change of rules that insists buggies cannot be collected at the plane but now must be collected at the carousel. We tell them about our connecting flight and they reassure us they will try to talk with the ground staff at Heathrow (that buzzing is getting louder).
3. The plane takes off twenty minutes late.
4. Waiting to disembark the plane at Heathrow we can see our buggy on the tarmac. The head stewardess attempts to get the ground staff to allow us to pick up the buggy on the tarmac. She fails. We have to take the last coach to the terminal. The head stewardess thanks me for remaining patient. I smile (as all Brits are supposed to do when things don’t go our way) and tell her I won’t be so patient when we miss our connecting flight (the alarm bell is definitely ringing now).
5. Passport control have an express line for those with the biometric e-passports. We all have such passports (as do a number of other passengers) but are told by a Heathrow employee that noone has the chips and everyone will have to join the very long line for those with ordinary passports. While the alarm bell begins to shriek I also stew over the fact that a couple of months ago I paid something like £120 for this new e-passport that I can’t use.
6. We collect the buggy at the carousel but, of course, are now checked out of the airport and will have to race from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and then check in again.
7. With carry-on baggage, buggy and one, three and four-year-old in tow, we sprint through the tunnels of terminals until, breathlessly, we reach the Aer Lingus check-in desk. They tell us the plane doors have closed. We can’t board. Our bags have also been taken off the plane.
8. In tears, my wife pleads for them to phone the gate to appeal to someone’s humanity to let us and our three kids (two of who are now fighting the urge to vomit). Reluctantly they phone. The gate does not pick up.
9. We race for the gate to plead our case. Firstly, the x-ray guys made us take out every item and bottle from the baby bag. Then my wife had to test every bottle. My wife and kids went through the x-ray but just as I was going through the woman behind me got impatient and went through the x-ray at the same time as me. The x-ray people made me go back and let the pusher-inner go first. As a punishment for my frustrated reaction one of the x-ray people then proceeded to do a full and thorough frisk, followed by a full and thorough scan with the metal detector. I was expecting the rubber gloves to come out but we then had to deal with the acerbic remarks of one of the x-ray women who babbled something about us paying her mortgage…?!
10. Beyond the x-ray machines lays the first of two biometric checkpoints. Having to have your picture taken twice tells me the security measure and the technology is flawed (unless, in my haste, I missed the DNA-altering outlet between the two checkpoints…). As the idea of technology is to make our lives easier and more convenient, perhaps allowing ourselves more time to do more worthwhile things, standing in front of a biometric camera – twice – for the best part of half a minute each time (multiplied by five for the number of us) seemed a bit anachronistic.
11. We get to the gate area (just by the Weatherspoons pub) and it is clear the plane has gone. The lady at the Aer Lingus desk is not rude but is, like all so far, impotent. The best Ms Aer Lingus can do for us is to book us onto the first flight next morning, nine and a half hours away. The kids have been fantastic up to this point but faced with the prospect of a night sleeping on benches somewhere inside the airport (but not by the gates, as Ms Aer Lingus tells us matter-of-factly, or we will be turfed out) or on benches outside on the street they start to become restless.
12. It is when Weatherspoons begins to close up for the night at 10.15 (yes, the world’s busiest international airport closes at 10.15 in the evening!) that it finally dawns on us: all was lost. We decide now we have to find someone from BA to complain to and retreat back into the departures area.
13. Wandering around the empty airport we eventually find a security woman. My wife tells her our tale of woe and she replies, “That’s really bad! ” We all feel like hugging her. She is the first person we have encountered at Heathrow that has shown even a shred of decency. Even better, she tells us that Costa Coffee is open until midnight and that they will likely give us some milk for the baby who is going into conniptions. She also informs us CC reopens at 4 am so we will only be sleeping on the street for four hours!
14. Trying to find Costa Coffee was almost surreal. I was born in England and was an English teacher for fifteen years but I couldn’t fathom the signs and their ambiguity in terms of direction and lack of information.By this point, though, we were taking hell in its stride and with the power of positive thinking we bumped into somebody else who turned out to be both human and helpful. Repeating our plight for the umpteenth time, this BMI employee tells us that BA have a 24 hour customer service desk over in Terminal 5.
15. We find the Heathrow Express (ha ha – someone there DOES have a sense of humour!) and correct platform with no help from the coy signage. With bags, babies and buggy we traverse the metal barriers and all exhale simultaneously as we begin to wait the 11 minutes for the Terminal 5 train (there’s something about that word ‘terminal’, isn’t there?). After a while a bloke with an illuminous bib tells us the train won’t stop at that part of the platform but will stop further down. So, on top of everything, Heathrow has platforms too big for the trains or trains too small for their platforms…The lack of painted lines on the platform to indicate where particular trains may or may not stop was a nice but, by now, expected touch.
16. We touched down at Terminal 3, descended the rings of hell in Terminal 1 and now find ourselves in Terminal 5 where the 24 hour BA customer service desk in the world’s busiest airport closes at 11 pm…The last customer service lady was just getting ready to trudge home when we collapsed before her counter. She asked all the standard BA questions designed to trip you up or somehow make you, the passenger, accountable for their blame. She said her computer showed that our flights were booked seperately rather than as connecting flights. Heathrow really should look long and hard at either the technology or staff it employs as one or the other is seriously flawed. I showed her the printed itinerary and printed e-tickets that showed the flights had been booked as connecting, not seperate. “Ah…” she said and promptly phoned her manager who was just getting ready to go home as well.By the nature of her responses I could tell he was asking her the same questions she had just asked us. Finally she mentioned she had the printed itinerary in front of her. “Ah…” I could hear him concede on the other end of the line. Ms Customer Service told us to wait while the manager was making up the hotel vouchers.
17. While waiting I was sitting opposite an advertising board that made the following foolhardy claim: “Heathrow – making every journey better.” I don’t know how whoever wrote that could keep a straight face. The manager came over with the hotel vouchers plus fifty quids worth of vouchers for food and beverage in any of Heathrow’s outlets, a sweetener to distract us from thinking about claiming compensation. The vouchers were good for the day (it was now 11.35 pm) and only Costa Coffee was still open so it looked like it would be Americanos, smoothies and paninis all round then. The CC guys were very nice and helped us fuel up for £49. They looked for a £1 product but it turned out the cheapest thing on offer was a £1.15 flapjack…
18. Although it is actually a part of the Terminal 5 building the Sofitel hotel is typically signposted in that lovably Heathrow way i.e. not at all. A cop who looked just as lost as us told us we had to go through a couple of carparks “and then on a bit, ” to get to the Sofitel. We were so close but we still had to go up an elevator, then down. Then up again. Then down again.
19. At 4.30 am we are positivity personified. We ARE going to escape from the Twilight Zone this morning! We get to the double doors that will take us to the Heathrow Express and the first train of the day that will take us back to Terminal 1. The doors are locked. An employee says that the doors will be opened at 5 am. That will give us 7 minutes to get to the train. Do-able. Bang on 5 the guy back and opens the other set of double doors – the ones away from where ourselves and the other passengers have been waiting.
20. Two minutes past five – five minutes until the train leaves. We get to the metal barriers and, after last night, have learned that you can open the barriers by lifting a set of pins. So, the barriers are there to stop people taking the trolleys onto the trains – but any passenger can open the barriers with a flick of a finger… and take the trolleys onto the train!
21. We get to the Aer Lingus check-in counter. The check-in girl hesitates. “There’s no problem. I am new, ” she assures in her Eastern European accent. Her colleague comes across and tells us that we cannot check in at the check-in…! We have to go to the ticket counter first. We make the ten meter trip across to the ticket counter and the ticket lady is already preparing our boarding passes. Yes, we cannot check-in at the check-in counter but can check-in at the ticket desk.
22. Passport control and x-rays couldn’t be easier this morning. We still have to have our photos taken twice (four times now if you include yesterdays snaps) and have just checked in for the third time to get us from Larnaca to Ireland but the Emerald Isle is just a short hop away now. In fact, the people at the x-ray machine let us through without checking any of the baby items and bottles. It couldn’t be more different to yesterday’s quest.
23. We’re on the plane. We’re finally going to Ireland. Not just yet…The flight is more than fifteen minutes late taking off. Had yesterday’s flight been just as tardy we wouldn’t have had any of the ordeal we have have just overcome. Still, let’s not dwell…we’re finally up in the air.
24. We arrive at Dublin airport. Our buggy is waiting for us just outside the aircraft in the buggy collection point (a civilised idea – you should try it, Heathrow!). We get to the carousel. Heathrow lost one of our suit cases...
Not so long ago the same nation that is responsible for unleashing Heathrow upon the earth also claimed two thirds of the globe as its own. How the hell did they ‘manage’ that?! What does that say about all those that were colonised by ‘them’?!
When Beijing hosted the previous Olympics, China conducted a series of public education programmes to ‘civilise’ the population, to help them behave in ways in which they felt the rest of the world might feel more comfortable. For example Chinese people were taught not to spit because foreign people do not like spitting. They were taught to how to use the traffic signals at pedestrian crossings. They were taught not to wear their pyjamas in the street. Many of them tried to learn English so they could converse with the foreign visitors. The airports insisted on staff being friendly and efficient. They even had little smiley face buttons for passengers to rate the guy who checked and stamped their passports. Then, and now, Beijing and Pudong airports became the most civilised airport experiences I had in my 15 years overseas – not bad for a nation attacked by many for its human rights abuses and lack of open-mindedness…Now, with the Olympics in London just a week away, I look at Heathrow…The police state that is Heathrow seems a bit incongruous with what Britain is supposed to stand for…
Thinking back to that experience last week (and those of the past 15 years) I can’t help but think the terrorists have won. In fact, Heathrow has decided that if you can’t beat them, join them. The range of emotions they made me and my family feel – the confusion, the anxiety, the guilt, the frustration, the fear, the desperation, the desolation – seem to me to be the epitome of terrorism. That airport terrorised me and my family (as they have done repeatedly over the last decade and a half) in ways far more sadistic than some nut who sticks explosives in his shoe or who ramraids the windows of a terminal building. From now on I will try to fly anywhere except through that hole called Heathrow. I think the chance of meeting a nutter on a plane is far less than meeting a nutter who works at Heathrow airport.
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