Well it started to go pear shaped before we'd even left Glasgow in that we discovered our onward flight to Lisbon had already been cancelled.
The saving grace of that knowledge was that at least we weren't fretting about making our connection what with the flight from Glasgow being about 1.5 hours late leaving and then, on arrival at Heathrow, there being no gates available so the plane had to sit with its engines switched off in a remote corner of the airport until one became free. Fortunately, we were only in that state of purgatory for about 20 minutes although the captain reported over the tannoy that he'd heard of some arriving flights waiting for up to 4 hours for a stand to become available. (Can you imagine how gruesome that must be?)
At this point, I want you to do a quick "spot the difference" competition. Before taking off from Glasgow, we asked the British Airways staff the following three questions in light of the cancellation of our connecting flight:-
1. What happens about a new onward flight to Lisbon?
2. Do we have to collect our luggage at Heathrow?
3. Will BA pay for a hotel overnight in London?
The answers from the Glasgow BA staff were:-
1. Phone this (not free) number (replied to only by recorded message about unprecedented volume of calls).
2. Yes.
3. No.
On arrival in Heathrow, the answers were:-
1. You're already booked on BA500 departing at 07.30 tomorrow morning.
2. No.
3. Yes.
Can you spot the subtle differences there?
The roast lamb at the carvery at the Marble Arch Thistle Hotel was excellent and I'm grateful to BA for their hospitality but their people at Glasgow Airport need to go on a travel chaos training course.
To be continued ...
1 comment:
If you think 4 hours waiting on the runway is bad - our English friends on the way over here before Christmas spent 12 hours in their stationary vehicle because of the Euro tunnel chaos!!!!
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