Late Expectations

What a day! Oh the joy of travelling. Just when you think you’ve chosen the perfect flight, something always comes along to make you a day late.

And this time it’s not even my fault. Gone are the days of checking in at full-rush panic an hour before the flight takes off. No more lurching towards the desk to see them put up the Flight Closed sign, arguing unsuccessfully that surely there’s time to admit one more person. These days I actually travel like a responsible adult.

I was advised by a housemate who flew recently to get to the airport at least four hours before the flight, because of the increased terror alert (from beige to sunset orange I think, but I could be wrong). Restrictions and heightened security meant it was taking that long to clear check-in and bag searches. I scoffed at the four hour mark, getting there a measly three hours and 20 minutes before my scheduled flight.

Everything started so well. It took 20 minutes to locate the British Airways desk, check-in and drop off my bag. I’d been panicking because I couldn’t check-in online, most likely because this is a group booking and I didn’t order it. As I strolled through security in about 10 minutes I wondered what all the fuss was about. I now had almost three hours before the plane revved up its engines. Ho hum.

The first setback happened when I got bored of shopping, about 10 minutes after starting to browse. I sat down to read the book my Oirish flatmate had lent me. I’d been telling her about the epic Stephen King saga it has taken me more than 15 years to finish. She asked if I’d read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and since it’s on my list I was ecstatic when she said had them. In paperback. I had spent the night before the flight reading the final part of The Dark Tower until 2am so I didn’t have to take that brick of a hardback with me for the sake of 100 pages or so. It almost breaks hand-luggage restrictions on its own.

So I settled down to begin the adventures of Lyra, knowing I was in for a treat. Except I wasn’t. Because instead of packing the first book in the series, Northern Lights, I had brought the final part of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. I’d obviously been thinking about the title of the upcoming film, The Golden Compass, which has ditched its original UK title for the US book name. Bollocks. Back to shopping then and with three book shops I was pretty sure I could pick up the first part and still have the two other parts free when I returned. Again, no luck, and nothing else really grabbed my attention. So I went off to wait.

As we all queued at the flight gate a few hours later I was still unaware of how bad things were going to become. And then the announcement came, that the flight was “technical”. I didn’t know what that meant at first, because they didn’t say it was a technical problem, just that "Flight 287 is technical". Then they told us we were going to change gates as there was another suitable airplane standing by. All still good, although now we were looking at a 3.30pm takeoff when we should have boarded at 1.30pm and been off the ground at 1.50pm.

Still, this wasn’t a disaster yet. I’d managed to stay out of the bars. I hadn’t bought any duty free goods that look temptingly cheap but cost more than you’d pay from an internet retailer. And I wasn’t even angry, just a little weary and looking forward to getting on the plane. I might even sleep, having only managed five and a half hours the night before. Damn you Stephen King.

It’s at 3.30pm that the universe folded in on itself. I’d been lulled in to a false sense of security by watching some of the plane’s cargo and the food being loaded on board. But having failed to get everything ready by the allotted time, a takeoff now would put the flight staff over their maximum allowed working hours. Amazingly, BA doesn’t have any other flight staff on stand by. It prefers to spend €300,000 (around £200,000) – if the ticket manager’s estimate is correct – booking alternate flights on rival airlines and putting people up in a hotel, with meals thrown in.

But the pain wasn’t over yet. At 4.20pm I retrieved my bag and headed upstairs to rebook flights. There I was met by a smug, fat customer services advisor who seemed unapologetic and handed me a letter telling me it was unlikely we would make a flight today. Most likely, we would all be booked on flights tomorrow. What he failed to mention is that the queue I was in to rebook those flights would take three hours plus to issue me with new details.

At this point I was in a dilemma. Living in London I could bail and go home and try and sort this out over the phone. But that would leave me anxious until it was sorted, so I decided to stick it out. Besides, if they booked me on an insanely early flight it would be difficult to make it to the airport early enough without booking a taxi – and they weren’t throwing the price of that in.

So I spent a grim night in an airport hotel. I ate fairly poor buffet food and went immediately to bed, exhausted. After all, I needed to be up first thing to catch a 4.30am shuttle bus and check in for my 7.55am American Airlines flight. Something told me the pain was just beginning.