The last 3 days have been a whirlwind. A whirlwind of plans, emotions, cancelled flights, lack of sleep, junk food, friends, laughter, tears, annoyance and lack of information. I will remember these few days for the rest of my life. I have no doubt about that.
Let's just start from the beginning of this extended adventure.
On Friday we went on the London Eye, which was absolutely incredible. The views were gorgeous and the weather was absolutely flawless. It was the PERFECT ending to an incredible semester. I've tried uploading pictures just now, but since I am using free wifi at a cafe it's taking forever. I'd been looking forward to the Eye all semester and it definitely lived up to expectations.
We went to dinner at a traditional English pub on Friday night. I came back to Harrow and stayed awake all night to ensure I could fall asleep on my Saturday morning flight. I finished packing and cleaning my room. I left a bunch of things behind for my flatmates (blankets, dishes, food, shampoo, etc.) I managed to fit everything into my bags, even the odd shaped gifts I have purchased for people. The most unusual ones are for Nana and once they're opened, she'll understand the struggle I endured to get them back to The States!
Saturday 18 December 2010
I left my flat at 5:45am to head to Heathrow. Keep in mind my flight was at 9:20am. That's nearly 4 hours early.
I got on the wrong tube. I was annoyed and stressing about carrying over a hundred pounds of luggage. There are two northern tubes from Northwick Park (the tube stop at my flat) and I NEVER go that way. I got on the wrong one and had to switch over. I was literally breaking a sweat carrying all my stuff. It was so obnoxious. I figured I could handle it because it was so early and I knew they wouldn't be busy at 6am. I got on the second tube that ran in the morning, not kidding.
I changed my route that took considerably longer so that I could switch trains less times. That's how tired I was. When I finally got on the Picadilly line to Heathrow, I felt physically sick, nauseous. I think some of that was the fact I realized I was actually leaving and that made me anxious and sad. The other part was from exhaustion of carrying the luggage.
I checked in my bags in security with no issues. Initially, my plane was delayed an hour and a half which was disappointing but I wasn't concerned about my connecting flight from JFK because I had a seven hour layover. During this time it started snowing. Lots of snow for the Brits. It wasn't more than four inches, but once the snow was the on the ground everything went to hell.
I boarded my plane before 10:30am. The captain came on the intercom after we settled in our seats and said we would be delayed for a few mintues because of the snow. "No big deal," I thought to myself. However, that's not what happened. We sat. And sat. And sat. It was about 12pm when he announced again that we could not be able to leave until 1pm at the earliest because the runways were not clear. The flight attendants began serving lunch at this time. Another hour later he announced that the the runways were closed to outgoing flights and were only accepting arrivals, but soon we should be on our way. To say that the passengers were annoyed is a bit of an understatement. We continued to sit on the aircraft until 5:30pm (that's seven hours since we boarded!) when the captain announced that Heathrow airport would be closing due to weather issues.
I was sitting near a few very frustrated Americans. "This would never happen int the United States," we said. Americans would not tolerate this kind of disruption. We sat on a stationary plane for seven hours! After deboarding, we were greeted by two women in Virgin Atlantic red coats who refused to answer any questions regarding a reschedule of the flights, where our bags were, what time we would reboard the plane, what actually caused the delay, etc. They were completely unhelpful. After leaving the aircraft we had to go through Customs to leave the departures gate. Are you kidding me?! We watied as 400 people had to clear Customs when most of them never even boarded a plane! That simply wouldn't happen in America. One thing that I have learned about British people is that they are incredibly reliant on tradition and procedures. In my opinion, that is the main cause for the congestion and confusion at Heathrow. What a waste of time to check 400 passports instead of having an airport official escort all of us through passport control? C'mon people.
Baggage claim was a complete madhouse. We had no idea where our bags were. Nothing was labeled. The conveyor belts were running but you couldn't tell which flight was on which belt. It was complete chaos. People were crying and yelling at airport officials. We wandered around trying to locate our baggage. Virgin officials were giving us (by "us" I mean random Americans I met on the plane) conflicting nformation. No one really knew what was going on, but instead of actually telling they didn't know they gave us false information. Hours later we realized we were on a chase for luggage that hadn't even been taken off the plane! Our luggage was taken off the plane a few days later after the weather had warmed. Apparently, it was too cold to empty the luggage.
Heathrow Organization
I topped up my phone and called Christine. Her flight was scheduled for 4pm so I knew she hadn't left London either. We met up at a M&S grocery store in the airport to buy food and find each other. Reuniting with was a breath of fresh air. Such a relief. I knew it would be much easier to conquer this situation with a friend.
We went to the Virgin desk and they were still unhelpful. They had no information about flights tomorrow. No information about how to rebook flights or get a refund. They were handing out papers with a phone number to call to book a flight. Christine and I were talking to people in the business class line and they were able to purchase tickets at the airport. We got in line thinking maybe we could upgrade our tickets if that meant we could leave. We were forced out of the line because we were not business class customers. Virgin workers refused to answer questions other than giving out a paper with the phone number. However, the phone number on the paper DID NOT WORK. It was only available for booking from 9am to 9pm. It was well after 9pm at this point. They just kept saying it was overworked and we just needed to wait on the line to get through. It was absolutely ridiculous. If this sort of thing happened in America, people would adjust and adapt to fix the problem. Here, it felt like people were doing nothing to fix the problem. Workers couldn't even answer questions. It was incredibly frustrating because we had no information and they wouldn't give us any updates of the situation. You ask how to refund the flights and they respond with "read the paper for directions." I am not exaggerating here. I have never been more annoyed, flustered and frustrated in my life. It felt like we were being lied to and Virgin didn't even care. I have never been more disappointed with a brand and their customer service in my entire life. To me, it seems like it would have been beneficial for the administrators of Virgin to come up with a plan of how to deal with the chaos and irate customers and then instruct the workers how to deal. None of that happened because nearly every Virgin worker we spoke with had a different explanations for the lack of organization.
People were saying we wouldn't be able to leave until Monday. At the time, the thought of that was too much to think about. Tt's Monday night and I won't even be home until tomorrow night at 11pm at the earliest. The thought of not being able to see Caleb for a few more weeks made me cry. I knew he should go home to see his family rather than wait in Indy for me to come home. At this point, I had no idea when that would be. I definitely cried on Saturday night.
We found out spot to camp out for the night. We wanted to stay in the airport because we still didn't have our luggage. It was about 10pm at this point. We were with 2 other IFSA-Butler students that we hadn't previously met before.
Heathrow was complete chaos. People were wall to wall laying down in the departures gate. Some airlines had given out blankets to customers. A group of Aussies had a tent. Bottles of water were distrubuted by the airport for free. They were giving out "blankets;" they were basically tin foil in that is the size of a blanket. I think I slept two hours throughout the night. One of us needed to stay awake to watch out for our things. It was horrible. No one knew any information if we could even get out of London tomorrow (Sunday) and it was frustrating. We hadn't eaten any real food. We'd been wearing the same clothes for over a day. We were tired and ready to be home. Walking through the airport was unreal; it was like a scene from a movie. It is hard to believe this is actually happening.
This is normal, obviously.
Our group moved at about 4:30am to get in line at the Virgin Atlantic desk so we could be amongst the first in line when they opened at 6:00am. When we weaved through the crowds sleeping on the ground we woke basically everyone up. It's kind of funny now. Christine and I had a cart with our carry-on luggage and those handy tin foil blankets. The shuffling of the blankets woke people up and literally within 5 minutes a line of probably more than 100 people had formed. Hah. We waited. And waited. And waited. No one came to the desk until almost 10am because Heathrow was still "technically closed" from the night before. And when people did come, it was two people. One man answered questions for a few minutes and the other woman wouldn't even come all the way to the desk. She stood on the steps in the background answering questions from the distance. She was obviously scared of the crowd. I don't blame her; I was livid at the situation and lack of information. People were cussing her out. It's just ridiculous that a multi-million dollar company doesn't have any sort of plan to deal with this sort of crisis other than handing out a piece of paper with a phone number! Again, this would never happen in America.
We were irritated and just left. A few more Virgin employees eventually came out and still (about 17 hours after the airport closed) had no answers for the situation. They were still handing out those cursed papers! Just writing this right now is getting me all worked up. I had Skyped my parents during the night and they were looking for tickets for me to get home on other airlines. They booked a ticket for Wednesday but I have to fly to Germany first and then Chicago. When they were booking, I became extremely nervous about getting stranded in Frankfurt for Christmas, not to mention I speak absolutely no German.
On a side note, our phones had died because we didn't have our chargers as they were in our luggage. Also, a fuse blew in my charger for my computer when I was charging it in the bathroom. Finding an outlet to charge things was a joke. I literally was sitting on the bathroom floor with my computer attached to the only available outlet I could find in the entire airport so I could Skype. So classy.
Christine and I decided the next thing we should do was try to find out luggage. We headed to the lost luggage counter. They wouldn't answer questions and you had to wait until your flight number was called. We waited for several hours. Finally, Virign employees came out and explained our things were still on board our plane from yesterday. Are you kidding me? That is over 24 hrs later and they had not manage to unload the luggage! Their reasoning was "it's too cold and dangerous to get it off the plane". It was apparently "too icy" to use the carts and the doors to the plane were locked shut by ice. That is ridiculous. But, maybe that is true but I find that hard to believe as it had stopped snowing during daylight hours the day before.
Our friend Elizabeth was due to leave Heathrow on Sunday morning but her flight was also canceled. We met up with her in terminal 4. It took us about a half hour to get there because the train was delayed (shocker!). That terminal was so much more calm than Terminal 3 which we were in. We had a nice, filling breakfast and then headed with her and her family to their hotel located a few miles from the airport. Two of her siblings were visiting and extended their stay in a hotel near Heathrow.
We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed to Central to go to Hillsong. It was a special Christmas service. I was so bummed when they announced it at church a couple weeks ago because I knew we would already be out of London. Joke time. We're still here! It was a cool play instead of a service. I genuinely enjoyed it, but was so tired to really be truly engaged. I mean, I hadn't slept for more than a couple hours at a time for 3 days.
We went to a pub for dinner and then headed back to hotel. We slept until 1pm today. All of us. We went to bed around midnight. That's how tired we all were. Crazy.
Monday 20 December 2010
Christine and I headed to Heathrow for another adventure. I had gotten 6 emails from Virgin saying my bags had been released. I wanted to get my luggage and figure out what was happening tomorrow. I also got an email saying our travel agent had gotten us another flight. Since we booked through an agent they rescheduled our flights through Virign for us.
At the airport, I confimed I am on the flight tomorrow afternoon to New York. When we slept in the airport we found out the Virgin was double booking flights so that means that not every person who booked from Virgin would be guaranteed a flight. I talked to an employee and she ensured that I am on the flight for tomorrow. Right now there is no snow. It's forecasted to snow later but I'm hoping it holds off. Christine's flight isn't until Thursday, but she is going to the airport tomorrow morning with me to be waiting at the desk in hopes of getting on standby and boarding a flight when some passengers don't show up.
We claimed my luggage. The doors to get into the Virgin desk were literally blocked off by Heathrow workers. You had to prove you were on a flight to enter. Since my bags were inside I got to inside because of that. I got my luggage and we charged our phones. I also am paying to have my luggage stored at the airport so that I don't have to haul it around Central again.
Tonight we are staying with an aunt of Grant's friend in Central London. I'm so thankful for her. It will be really nice to just sit on a sofa and chill for a little while.
We are leaving about 6:00am tomorrow to get to Heathrow. I've been praying and hoping my flight will leave. If for reason it doesn't I still have the flight booked for Germany to Chicago. I will probably get to Indy about 11pm if everything goes according to plan. It's snowing pretty hard right now but I'm still hoping and praying we can Christine and I get out tomorrow. Keep praying for us!
This post probably sounded like a massive complaint but in the mist of all of this nuttiness, the extra days in London have also been filled with laughter and jokes about the situation. There has been no shortage of frustration but also some great times with good people. I'm loving the extra time with Christine. This adventure without her would have been so much harder. I'm glad we are conquering this together! Thank God for her! :)
I don't know if I was completely ready to leave on Saturday but now I'm more than ready. Hopefully tomorrow is the day for a long awaited return to America!
