Planes and Blizzards: A Recipe for Disaster

Yesterday was my first attempt to fly home for Christmas, and it (of course) coincided with the Great London Blizzard of 2010.  It ends with me stranded here in my apartment in London with Heathrow Airport shut down at least until Monday.  It's a shame that I love to travel so much, since I seem to be cursed with setbacks.

First of all, let me just say that London Heathrow during the holiday rush is bafflingly complicated.  There are way too many people who don't know what they're doing (I'll count myself as one of them) and not enough staff to go around.  Arriving at Terminal 3, there were so many people crammed tightly into indistinct and meandering lines that it was impossible to sort out which line was which.  What you had to do was pick a line that looked promising and ask the people around you which line they thought it might be. You would then get several opinions, but a majority opinion would be taken as an authority on the matter and this would lead to an exodus of the rest of us for other lines to start the process over again.  It was like an interpretive dance of confusion.

Once I got through security, all seemed to be going well.  There were a few cancellations on the flight board, but they were all morning flights, so I assumed that the runways must still have been icy from the night before.  I sipped on a coffee in the main waiting lounge and waited for my gate to open up.  My stomach was beginning to unclench from the chaos of check-in and I was soon to be ( I thought) in the air and on my way home for Christmas.  Then, on my way to the gate, I passed a window.  My heart sank.  It wasn't just snowing, it was blizzarding- buckets and sheets of snow in giant, picturesque and artificial-looking flakes that swirled unrelentingly in every direction.  More snow than I've ever seen at one time in my life.  I stood there staring at it with a sinking feeling of foreboding thinking that this couldn't be good.

However, the staff at the gate seemed to be optimistic as they welcomed me to my flight.  I have to confess that the gate system at Heathrow seems unnecessarily complicated.  Getting in (initially) is easy enough.  You show your ticket and passport to the member of staff who gives it a cursory glance, tears your ticket and waves you into the gate which is cordoned off with plexiglass walls and contains nothing but seating and a Coke machine.  Once you're there, there's no getting out easily except in cases of emergency.  Most of the time, I'm sure this system works fine as there's usually only about 30 minutes to wait until you board the plane.  In our case, though, we waited for 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours with no word on when/whether we would board.  Many people (myself included) waited as long as they possibly could for a restroom before giving in.  To leave the gate and go to the restroom (which was about 10 steps from where I was sitting, with a glass wall in between) you had to relinquish your passport, and when you returned you were subjected to a baggage and purse inspection and a security pat down (very thorough- they even checked the insides and bottom of my shoes and the soles of my feet).  I couldn't help but think to myself that if a terrorist did somehow manage to make it past the initial airport security, they might conceivably be able to get onto a plane just fine unless, God forbid, they had to use the restroom.

After all that, it was announced that the runways would close until 4 pm and that a decision would be made then about flight status.  Until then, we would need to wait in the main lobby and watch the flight screen (from which our flight soon mysteriously disappeared) for more information.  Once there, we were all left to fend for ourselves and information was hard to come by.  Security staff didn't seem to know any more than we did and the information counter was abandoned except for a handwritten paper message to follow the emergency exit signs for more information if our flight was cancelled.  So we waited.

There should be an anthropological study of stranded passengers at airports.  It was fascinating how people made the best of the situation.  There was not enough seating for everyone, so travelers and families piled luggage and coats into temporary camps in corners and corridors and Heathrow became a refugee village.  Provisions were shared, information acquisition became a communal effort and new friendships were formed ("Mummy, this is Olivia and she's from AMERICA!").   In one corner, a baby who was just learning how to craw butt-scooted back and forth between three families who obviously had never met one another before but now clapped encouragingly for the laughing baby as they passed him back and forth.  A man with a toddler played Follow-the-Leader through the aisles of a store.  Santa, leaving his post in the shopping area, made his way among the groups of families cheering up the bored and disgruntled kids.  Any horizontal space large enough was covered in coats and softer bags and made into makeshift beds where some people actually slept (a heroic accomplishment given the noise and the chaos).  And then most of the flights were cancelled.  We were given a number to call to reschedule and told to leave.  You can imagine the chaos that ensued when that many people all tried to leave at the same time.

Then, to top it all off, the Tube was having major problems with signal failures due to the cold, which led to major train delays, massive pileups on the platform, and way too many people on one train.  Imagine the circus act where tons of clowns squeeze into one tiny car, then add large/heavy/numerous luggage.  It was like a combined game of Twister and Tetris and hilarity ensued any time someone in the center of the train had to maneuver over, around, and under other people and their assorted luggage to get off the train.  One lady, completely blocked in by a pile of bags that could not easily be moved, was physically lifted over it by a couple of helpful men, and her suitcase crowd-surfed from hand to hand overhead to join her on the platform.  On the positive side, it was the first time I've ever seen human interaction and smiles on the Tube.  Fun stuff!

Anyway, I'll get home eventually (perhaps) and meanwhile I have another interesting saga for the travel journal.