The other day, I woke up in my bed in Oxford, and, as per usual, opened up the BBC news website. Nothing interesting was going on - a few updates on the Israel-Lebanon conflict, etc, etc.
There was also a story about a foiled airline terror plot. “Oh good,” I thought to myself. “They caught some people”. It took until I was in the middle of my shower when I realized “wait just a second, I’m traveling tomorrow”.
The terror plot and ensuing mess at UK airports was the conversation at breakfast and throughout the day. Everyone on the program gathered around the TV watching the news, trying to see if we’d be able to fly home the next day. For a good 10 hours, we were under the impression that most of us would be staying at Oxford for a few more days at least.
I checked the British Airways site about every half-hour for updates, and at about 1:30am, decided to call it a night.
Half an hour later, I woke up, checked the BA site, and since my flight was still scheduled to take off at 10am, started to get ready for my journey.
I checked out of the college, and walked to Gloucester Green, the Oxford bus terminal, with my two huge bags. I made it there around 3:30, to catch my 4am bus. There were a few people from my program on the bus with me, which was nice. I had to argue with the driver to let me on the bus, since my ticket was for a later bus. I’d emailed the company earlier, and they’d told me that I could go on the earlier bus, but even after showing him the emails I’d printed out, he kinda scowled at me. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and I just walked past him onto the bus. I had only had 30 minutes of sleep, and was no mood to start off my day waiting another hour for the next bus.
The 90 minute bus ride was pretty uneventful. We arrived at the Heathrow Central Bus Station, which is connected to the terminals via a series of tubes. I walked through them for about 10 minutes, and popped out into Terminal 1, where I was supposed to check in. I fought my way through the crowds (there were lines to get in the lines to get in the lines), and finally found the BA checkin area. There were no passengers there! I scurried up to a checkin kiosk, punched in my flight info, got my boarding pass, and headed over to the bag drop. Unfortunately, I was told, I couldn’t drop off my bags until 7:05am. It was 5:30.
I sat down, intent on just waiting it out in the terminal. Not five minutes later, a BA employee comes up to me and asks to see my ticket. She told me I had to wait outside, as “they haven’t called your flight yet”. It turns out that I bypassed the system they’d had set up to let people in one flight at a time, because I’d come through the bus terminal. They were stopping people getting out of cars at the front of the terminal, not letting them in until their flight had been called.
So now I was in a state of limbo - I was checked in, but still had my bags. Uh-oh. As I left the terminal to go wait outside, I found a security lady, and she told me to come back into the terminal around 6:55.
Outside, they had a huge tent set up, and they were telling people to line up to get into the tent. Nobody really knew what was in the tent, but rumor was spreading that there was free food, so everyone lined up eagerly. Turns out there was just coffee in the tent, but the line that we were all in wasn’t for the tent, but rather just a way to control everyone while they were waiting to have their flight called.
I stood next to an American girl, who was flying to San Francisco. We stood in line for about two hours, when her flight number was called. She was all excited, ready to go, until we realized that the flight numbers they’d just called had been *canceled*. “The following flights have been canceled. Please leave the airport.” That’s right — they wouldn’t let you even go to the counter to rebook your flight, you had to leave the airport. I bid the girl farewell as she went back to her hostel, hoping they had a room, and looked at my watch. It was 7:00, but they’d still not called my flight. Remembering what the security lady had told me about 6:55, I went to the door of the terminal anyway.
It turns out that the same security lady was at the door, and she recognized me. She let me go in even though my flight wasn’t supposed to go in for another hour. Because of that, the line to drop off my bags was only about 5 minutes.
The line for security, however, was not 5 minutes, but rather an hour and five minutes.
They patted EVERYONE down. Now, also keep in mind, that no hand baggage was allowed on any flights out of the UK. Everyone was given a clear plastic bag, into which you could put only your passport, travel documents, and essential medicines. No books, iPods, laptops, etc. Yet they still x-rayed everyone’s clear plastic bags.
After being frisked a little too… friskily… for my taste, I waited in the terminal until my flight. Then they frisked every passenger on my flight again, at the gate.
It looked like we’d be taking off only 20 minutes late or so, and we began to taxi onto the runway.
And then we sat there. Half an hour passed. An hour. An hour and a half. Then an announcement:
“This is Nigel Thomas, your captain speaking. We regret to inform you that we have no furhter information for you. Thank you.”
No “further” information? We didn’t have *any* information!
After hour two passed, we got another “update”:
“This is Nigel Thomas, your captain speaking. We regret to inform you that we are still waiting for Washington, D.C. to give us clearance to depart the United Kingdom. British Airways are calling DC four to five times every hour, but we do not have an update.”
Two and half hours in, they turned on the entertainment system, because “we could be here for a while.”
Four hours in, we were finally given clearance to depart.
Then came the uneventful twelve hour flight to Los Angeles.
“This is Nigel Thomas, your captain speaking. I am pleased to inform you that we are twenty minutes from landing in Los Angeles.”
A thunderous round of applause burst forth from the passengers. I swear to you, one of the flight attendants clasped his hands together, looked to the sky, and mouthed “thank you lord.” I can’t blame him - he’d been on duty since we got on the plane 16ish hours earlier.
As we landed, Nigel Thomas, your captain speaking, informed us that US customs would have to hand-search every bag on our plane, and that “this could take a while”.
As we deplaned, I noticed something weird. The building we were in didn’t look like the terminal. I figured out why very shortly. We weren’t in the terminal.
We were a 15 minute bus ride away from the terminal. We scooted off the plane onto cramped busses (the first one we got on broke down before we left, so we had to get onto another one). The busses passed the airline hangars, where they fixed the planes, passed the UPS and FedEx hangars, and finally we made it to the terminal.
We breezed through passport control/immigration, and into the baggage claim area.
Half an hour went by. An hour. An hour and a half. “Passengers from BA flight BA279, we regret to inform you that we have no futher information about your bags.”
Finally, two and a half hours after we’d landed, the baggage carousel started to spin. One bag came out. Two bags. Three bags. Twenty bags. Twenty bags. Twenty bags. Twenty bags. Only twenty bags! Then the carousel stopped.
Half an hour later, the bags began flowing again. I found mine, got out of there like a bat outta hell, and found my dad, only about 27 hours after I’d left Oxford.
Posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 3:39 pm. Categories: Adventures, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “Traveling through Heathrow (A.K.A. it only took me about 30 hours to get home)”
Marissa Says:
August 15th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Sweet Jesus. That’s, sadly, not unbelievable, but still astonishing. I think my favorite part is the very British “We have no further information for you” — you know an American captain would’ve been like, “Hey, folks, thanks for flying our airline; looks like we’ve got a small problem across the pond in terms of us landing there, so we’re gonna need to wait for clearance. It’s a lovely day in D.C.; high around 78, low about 65. Windspeed 10 miles an hour from the northwest. We’ll let you know the moment we’ve got new information. Thank you for your patience, ladies and gents.”
JPG Says:
August 15th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Oh wow. I thought my 17 hours from Palermo to New York were bad. That’s terrible. I’m hoping things won’t be this way for long… I have a feeling anybody who doesn’t already HAVE to get in or out of the country won’t be traveling to or from the UK anytime soon… in the short run, it won’t matter, everyone who already has plans to travel there will… but once those people run out, I’m nervous about what this will do to the economy. No more tourism, and people who have to travel for business are in quite a jam.
Frankie Says:
August 15th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
My favorite is the pilot’s name.
Aaron, how did you manage not to explode with no entertainment that entire time? I’d've been screaming by hour six.
Anyway, glad you got home safely.
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