Bank Holiday Travel Hell

There's a reason they don't show movies about airplane disasters on planes-: It's very unnerving. So too is reading about potential airline disasters every day in the paper for 2 weeks before you fly. I had laid awake most the night wondering if this flight might be our last. The thought that one of my fellow passengers and fellow countrymen might want to kill me, my wife, my son and my baby just would not go away. The papers of course had gone in to graphic detail about how the plane would disintegrate at 31,000 feet. What would happen to me if that happened? How long would I live? Would I have time to say good bye? Would I look into my daughters eyes and feel guilty for bringing her? At 4:00am I gave up trying to sleep, showered and commenced the final pack.

As we left the hotel at 5:30am on Saturday I was not looking forward to the trip home. In fact I was dreading it. Our macho taxi driver told us he had been driving all night. Why is that macho? I was none too impressed when he had a near miss with a line of stationary traffic as we neared Heathrow. I won't be using the Octobus taxi service again, ever.

We had been told by Virgin to check-in no less that 3.5 hours before our flight which we dutifully tried to do. However there were no Skycaps to take our luggage into the terminal and boy did we have a lot of luggage. Each door into the airport was manned/blocked by some officious little nobody who would only let you past if you were traveling with a particular airline. I enquired where the Skycaps were and was told to go 3 doors down and ask at information. I went 3 doors down and was refused entry to Information because I was traveling with Virgin and could only enter the airport by the door 3 doors up. "But they sent me down here." I replied.
"Well you can't come through here." was the little fascists response.

At this point I seriously considered either pushing past the guy or just punching him in the face really hard. I regained my composure and thought of the rest of my family shivering on the sidewalk and resigned myself to getting the luggage into the airport one way or another. But I won't forget the experience and if I get the chance to spoil some little sods day at Heathrow when I am traveling on my own I will do it, in fact I will go out of my way to do it because I am Scottish, not English.

In the end we managed to push most of our luggage on two trolleys with Alexander pushing the stroller with all the hand luggage on that. It was quite a feat. When we got to the Virgin check-in the place was almost empty apart from the staff. Perhaps they had all checked in 4 hours before, or perhaps some little fascist wouldn't let them into the airport at all.

Dena had carefully packed our original carry-on bags in our luggage and we had left some of our other luggage back at my parents. We now had less luggage than we were allowed and we now sported some really ancient little carry-on bags including a light grey one which had word "Amstrad" on it in large white letters. I really don't know where that came from.

"Two of your bags are overweight." the check-in agent announced. "Do want to pay the $40 excess baggage fee to allow your bags to be checked?"
Dena was furious! Her tearful outburst at the check-in agent left the agent unmoved. "You can pay over there."

The stress of the trip home was beginning tell on Dena and she was starting to get really on edge.
"Can I take cosmetics in my carry-on?" she enquired of the security guy at the Fast Track.
" Oh no, no cosmetics allowed today." came the helpful reply from some female American passenger behind us in the queue. Dena turned and looked daggers at the woman. "I wasn't asking you I was asking him!" she growled.

We moved through the line discarding some of Fiona's medications. When we got through the x-ray I was asked about the bottle of Benadryl that we still had. I pointed out that it was prescribed by Fiona's pediatrician to the very professional but cheery and informed x-ray guy and we were allowed to keep it. I recalled seeing on a TV show about Heathrow how the security staff had all gone on vacation dressed as vicars and tarts and smiled to myself.

Airside, Dena bought some liquid aspirin for Fiona's teething, only to be told after (and probably quite deliberately after) she had bought it that she probably couldn't have it on the flight.
The same occurred after she bought water in duty free and had it delivered to the jet way. "You probably can't open that on the flight." we were told.

On the plane things got better. We were greeted by the perky cabin director who looked at our water and our aspirin and told us it was all fine to use. It turned out she had been on a customer service course the week before, because Richard Branson is concerned his staff have lost the plot regarding service since 911. Based on our trip to the UK I think he is right. Anyway this lady was great and looked after us very well including inviting me up the 1st class bar for a drink. 3 G&T's later I was definitely flying at 31,000 feet.