"The Nightmare Before Christmas at No-Go Heathrow"

A brilliant title taken from one of many London newspapers covering the nightmare of Heathrow. Over 500,000 people were affected by the weather disruptions in Europe and, naturally, I had to be one of them. The end of term (which seems so far away right now) finally arrived and, with that, a wicked cold for travelling and a staff party at a club in Northampton. I had a great time and it was fun to celebrate with my staff before heading for home the next morning.

Saturday morning at 4AM, I leave Northampton for London. At Heathrow, I arrived a couple hours early and thought "Well...I'll have a coffee, check my bags, walk around a bit, and I'll be on a plane before I know it." I look up at the departures board and everything--everything--reads "Cancelled." Nobody understood why, or understood what was going on. A few minutes later, an announcement was made over the PA system saying that due to "adverse weather" Heathrow was going to be closed...welcome to the start of my very long day. The first thing was to wait in a re-booking line for 2 hours or so before a Heathrow worker walked by and handed out a piece of paper saying, essentially, that the airport workers would not be rebooking us there, we had to do it over the phone (a line that always automatically hung up because it was overloaded with calls) or online (a website which crashed and the WiFi wouldn't connect on my laptop) and we had to all go home.

After many frantic phone calls to Kristian later, he managed to book me a hotel room about 5 km away from the airport and I decided to hang around for the day to see if, just maybe, I could somehow get on a flight home. No dice. While waiting in yet another line, I started chatting with a couple girls and then 4 other guys arrived and we started to chat and hang out to pass the time. Tara, Jillian, Matt, Praveen, Brendan, JD and I were waiting in line when a BA worker, Soky came along with her personal cell phone and let us use that to call British Airways to rebook our flight. After securing a seat on the flight to Boston leaving Tuesday morning, the group of us decided we all deserved a drink and dinner. After about 14 hours in the airport, I was more than ready to head to the hotel. Praveen managed to jump the line for a cab (accidentally, but I wasn't going to complain) and then the cab driver told us the ridiculous amount it would costs us to get away from Heathrow--for me, the 5KM journey would cost me the equivalent of 50 dollars. Nothing like naming your price and squeezing all the money you can out of a bad situation.

I got to the hotel and collapsed. Not much excitement over the following two days, Sunday and Monday, except for me developing an unhealthy obsession with following the news, weather and frantically checking the Heathrow website to see if my flight was still a "go." As of Monday night, my flight to Boston was still scheduled to leave and the weather was looking promising. I woke up at 2:30 Tuesday morning and went online to check--still a go! I woke up at 6 on Tuesday morning and checked the Heathrow website--a pdf document listed all the flights that were going to leave Heathrow that day...my flight was not. on. the. list. Well. I called my airline and they told me my flight was still scheduled to leave so I decided that enough was enough. I was going to Heathrow and I was getting on an airplane and I was going to be in Canada by the end of the day or I was going to die (or end up on a no-fly list for the next 10 years) trying.

I got to Heathrow to see about 5,000 people in the terminal with hundreds of people asleep on the floor. I lined up (again) to get my boarding pass and I couldn't get the self-serve check-in to work. I flagged down an employee who then told me that my rebooked ticket hadn't been confirmed in the computer and I was, essentially, not going anywhere anytime soon. Somehow, he must have know the dangerous potential for the situation to become hysterical, because the man figured it out and printed me my almighty boarding pass. I was on the flight! I started chatting with a guy in the US Air Force and found out he was on the same flight as me, one row behind. We started hanging around together, standing in yet more lines and, in general, freaking out that we weren't going to make our flight. We were waiting to check our bags for so long, that we were pulled out of line and pushed to the front.

Next 45 minutes: check bags, run to security, through security, train to terminal, final boarding check--on the plane! At that point, I was excited, but trying not to get my hopes up. I had heard too many stories about flights that were taxied on the run-way and then pulled back and the people were told to get off and go home. My flight to Boston was one of 5 scheduled for that day and the only one to go out. An hour after our departure time, I finally took-off from Heathrow--I was on my way home! And in a seat upgrade to boot--thank you very much BA and, yes, I will take advantage of your complimentary bar service!

After becoming reacquainted with my good friend Bacardi, I landed in Boston and headed to my next terminal. While checking in, I was told that my connecting flight from Boston-Presque Isle hadn't been rebooked with my existing flight on Saturday. I'm not sure what the woman thought with me bursting into laughter at the counter, but, at that point, it just was too funny. Anything that could go wrong, did. Somehow, again, it got straightened out and I was given my almighty boarding pass. I went to my gate, 3 hours early and sat there, staring out the window at the plane to make sure it didn't leave without me. At 7PM that night, I was on my last flight home.

3 days, hours of waiting in lines, lots of tears and two flights later, I was on my way home. Getting off the plane in Presque Isle, I saw Dad, Susanne and Sarah waiting inside for me. I was home and I was so, so happy. The past couple of days haven't been too eventful--which is fantastic for me. Visiting family, eating, watching hockey again(!!), my first Tim Hortons in 4 months (AMAZING!!) and just generally loving being home.

Looking back over the time at Heathrow, I realize I was one of the lucky people who had a hotel room. There were thousands of people that just had no place to go and were sleeping on the marble floor of Heathrow for days on end. The airport had these yellow plastic raised platforms that people were sleeping on (lovingly nicknamed "banana boats") and were handing out blankets (after they ran out, people were given tinfoil emergency blankets), food (the packaged sandwiches from the airplanes) and bottles of water. It was just such a confusing few days...Terminal 1 & 3 were closed down to new arrivals--people weren't even allowed in the airport unless they were on a confirmed flight, Terminal 2 was shut down for construction, Terminal 4 was closed and Terminal 5 was running at 1/3 capacity. What is really frustrating about it all, though, is the fact that it snowed 10 cm on Saturday and that shut the entire city down until Tuesday, really. Heathrow is still not at capacity and will be a mess for the next week or more. I am so lucky that I got home and my deepest sympathy goes out to all the stranded people who will be spending Christmas at Heathrow airport.

And that, dear friends, is how this little Canadian found her way back home for Christmas. Merry Christmas!!