Thursday, July 10, 2008

Another flight delay experience, part 2

Next day:

09:30 This was when the coach was supposed to depart but it didn't until 09:50. Didn't matter anyway since there's absolutely no reason to go back to the airport so early anyway when the flight is rescheduled to depart on 13:15.

And to add to the potential trouble, the airline was scheduled to move to T1 on this exact date. Who knows what more trouble lies ahead of us...

10:00 You cannot believe how quick the re-check-in is. Apparently they have called in every single staff member available.

10:15 Then after security etc. at T1, we have to wait another several hours. As this is Heathrow, they won't tell you which gate it is until the last minute. In this case the electronic board sayid"gate opens 11:45".

There were a few laptop-friendly places in the waiting area - and when I plug mine in, nothing happened, and I was fearing the worse that the same adapter/fuse problem from last year happened again... Fortunately, everyone else failed, and it was just that the sockets actually gave no electricity...

11:45 The electronic board will usually only show two things: "Go to gate N"; or "Gate opens xx:yy". But at 11:45, our flight showed... "Please wait". Which can mean only one thing - delay...

12:40 They finally told us which gate it was.

13:15 Supposed take-off time and we were just beginning boarding.

13:25 Everyone was given a box of chocolates when boarding.

14:05 Plane finally started to move. A crew threw his fist to the air and shouted "yeah!". Come on, calm down, it is still on the ground...

14:40 Finally, the plane took off. Last night's hotel was just next to the runway!

Overall, my feeling is that they do all superficial things very well, like grabbing every single staff to stand around just to say good morning, and give you chocolates, etc. But they are extremely inefficient in actually sorting things out, and tried to cover up the true scale of the engineering problem until the very end.

Update: actually, I just realized my disaster in 2003 also happened in July...

No comments: