No BA-employee was available or interested in stranded passengers, but we saw they were all standing around in their barricaded offices and were smoking cigarettes. The distribution of food was restricted to water, tea, coffee and some cookies. In the lobby we found a note reading our “passenger rights”, which obliged the airline to provide stranded passengers with a re-booking system, supply a meal, etc. Except for some coffee, tea and cookies none of these were ever fulfilled.

Unable to contact any BA-employee we decided to re-book our own flights at another airline for the 13. of August 2006 returned safely at own additional costs of 900 GBP (for two flight tickets from Heatrow to Stuttgart-Germany).
A couple at the airplane heading for Stuttgart reported from other passengers,
these “free” re-booking lines were useless and nobody had been lucky
to re-book a flight by using these phone numbers. The only way to successful re-booking was to use a fully charged mobile phone, call the German BA-office and have some patience in waiting for them to re-book your flight.

Repayment of these additional costs (caused by a malfunctioning re-booking system) turned out to be a uncomfortable experiment. First of all the airline refused to respond for several months. After several months a lawyer came up by stating my flight had not been cancelled at all and left the airport with a delay of seven minutes! Compensation for extra ticket costs had to be rejected.

In retrospect we know the “Passenger Rights” are a farce. Airlines are providing us with malfunctioning phones and non-responding re-booking systems. In chaos they don’t care about their passengers. We will never be flying this airline in the years to come…[…]

Wide awake my ass – dream on, Wesley.

Reading through NNW today, I came across a few postings I felt I needed to comment on: Sean Bonner is making me feel real fat. Now he has forced me to go and look at the K2 bike I……

As for traveling now, I am sure it is much more organized and not as bad as the experience I went through on the first weekend after the news broke out on thursday. I returned that monday and it was MUCH MUCh faster. I’ll assume weekdays are better.

I was on Virgin Atlantic as well, which had many many booked flight. From what I hear, British Airlines was hit the most with something like 85% cancelled flights on that saturday. My monday flight in VA had many BA passengers.

I too was trapped there from 10, August until 12 August. (un)fortunately I decided to fedex all of my camera and personal electronics from LHR to Home here in Seattle to avoid (possible) theft and dammages. It is nice to see some photos of the mess there in LHR, and for the naysayers, I’ll vouch for these as I experienced a very similar scene.

I came in from Mauritius on BA and landed at about 6pm GMT on the 10th. Customs acted like they didnt really know what to do with us. After getting through that and learning of the situation I headed straight for the Hilton off of Terminal 4 and secured a room, thank the flying spagetti monster for Hilton Diamond Status!

My flight to chicago the next day (11th) was horrifically overbooked and at the suggestion of United’s UK staff I managed to secure myself a seat on a later flight on the 12th.

On the 12th I showed up to terminal 3 at 10am, decided to spent the 15,000 FF Miles with United for an upgrade to first -class (best FF upgrade ever) for a 16:20 flight to ORD (Chicago) and on to SEA (Seattle).

The checkin line chaoticaly wrapped itself around the outside of terminal 3, and post checkin/pre-security snaked its way around the upper floor of terminal 3 in a large, lopsided, and multiply wrapped figure-eight. Without being fast-tracked, despite multiple attempts, I managed to make it to the security inspection area at 16:15. A quick sprint to my gate, to stand in line for an additional 45 minutes for the second security screening I boarded my flight at 17:00 to be delayed an additional hour as the stragglers made it to the flight. We flew to ORD without incident.

Upon entry at ORD, I pulled my carryon out of the additional suitcase I purchased at Piccadilly on the 11th because of the new security rules, and rechcked my bags for the remainder of my flight. Atleast on intra-us flights laptops do not have to be packed in the hold (yet), and managed to get some delayed work done on the ride to SEA.

The flights were uneventful and atleast work and sleep filled. However, the security lines were the longest I have ever experienced anywhere, one person in pre-security line guestimated that there were some 50,000 to 80,000 people in Terminal 3 that day. This sounds grandiose to me, but I’m no statistician, though the scene at Heathrow absolutely makes waiting for the magic mountain at disney land seem like a breeze.

Conversely, I have a very hard time believing the supposed chemistry that the suspected terrorists were preportedely planning on using. Alhtough I dont blame the airports for taking the steps they did, this irrational paranoia and reactivity on the part of the authorities and society as a whole really has me shaking my head, for ‘the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself’.

Thanks for the post, and safe travels.

Chris Neitzert

My husband and I flew through Heathrow on the way from Munich to Boston (went to New York actually, with the cancellations, then to Boston the next day) and ended up with a cancelled flight on the 14th and some longish delays, but nothing overnight. The thing that drove me the craziest was while we were there the airport had begun lifting restictions, but the restrictions were inconsistant. No one, it seemed, knew what was allowed and what wasn’t.

Funny that you chose to read freakonomics, I ended up reading the same book when a three hour train ride on Amtrack turned into an 11 hour fiasco.

If the point of terrorism is to make people afraid and interrupt their lives, then you don’t need a bomb,
you just need the government and the threat of a bomb Also ask yourself how many people died of gun
crime or in car crashes in your country today, lets face it living isn’t a safe
thing to do.

The measures taken were a temporary (if highly unpleasant) disturbance which may well have been excessive for the threat we faced. However, I’m a firm believe that safeguarding the lives of so many innocent people is significantly more important than brazenly allowing those people to walk into a possible deathtrap.

I firmly believe that if you ask the majority of people who had their flights effected in some way, whether they think the security service did enough to protect them, they’d say they did. Whether the threat turns out to be real or not, only time will tell. But surely, if it turns out to be true that mutiple planes would have been destroyed and one of them would have been your flight, would you complain then?

Until the police and security services can prove the guilt of the men they’ve arrested I think it’s highly unfair to criticise anyone for their part in or management of this difficult situation.

August 16th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
You might not have enjoyed it, but at least you didn’t explode and fall burning from the sky.

Be grateful.

Fuck you. I will never fly. Why? It is always a BIG hassle to fly as a deaf person. When it’s like that, it’s 1,000 times worse..