Britain’s not working – that’s what we keep being told, anyway. After a day spent at Gatwick yesterday, I can’t help but agree. I was travelling on my own with a seven-month-old baby, so perhaps I started off on the wrong foot in the first place. But in actual fact, the baby was the least troubling part of my airport adventures.
We had to walk the many miles from Gatwick arrivals gates to passport control. ‘Where have you been?’, the official asked us. ‘Gatwick’. ‘Oh’, he responded sheepishly
The first I knew about the travel disruptions was once everyone was through the gate, ready – or so we thought – to board a Norwegian Air flight to Oslo. But the scheduled departure time came and went, with no messaging from staff. Eventually, a tannoy went out apologising for the ‘slight’ (ha!) delay due to what they termed as a fault of ‘airport services’, but stating that we’d be boarding in half an hour.
We all thought this might be a jet bridge or bus problem, until we looked at our phones and saw the news that flights were grounded due to air traffic control issues. The Telegraph were reporting that all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick were halted, but neither the airport nor the airline did. In fact, no one ever mentioned the actual problem to us passengers, merely blaming the vague ‘airport services’.
Time ticked by. After the promised half hour passed, they announced that the wait would be another half hour. Eventually, the staff allowed people out, one-in one-out, to use the bathrooms and visit the nearby Pret for sustenance. After an hour’s delay, my baby (thankfully) fell asleep. At that point, my biggest worry was that I’d have to wake her to board. Ha, what a funny joke!
Two and a half hours after our scheduled departure time, an announcement: we were free to leave the gate if we didn’t want to travel to Oslo, but it would be our own responsibility to arrange any further travel or logistics. Pret had run out of sandwiches. But it could be worse. The baby, bribed by more snacks than she’d ever had before, was being good. There were plenty of other children waiting too, including babies younger than mine, and another mother travelling alone with two toddlers who, understandably, were getting pretty fed up. At least, I thought, we had never been boarded onto the plane. Others sat on theirs for over three hours.
Then a message after three and a half hours…we had clearance to board. What did that mean? Nothing, it turned out. Eventually, four and a half hours after we were due to take off, the plane was finally cancelled.
This, it turns out, was just the beginning of the fun. We had to walk the many miles from Gatwick arrivals gates to passport control. ‘Where have you been?’, the official asked us. ‘Gatwick’. ‘Oh’, he responded sheepishly. Then to the luggage arrivals hall. This was like a scene from a horror film. Mountains of suitcases were stacked up waiting to be claimed. The carousels churned out bag after bag, while random members of the public pulled them off as fast as they could, adding them to the suitcase mountain. The only staff member to be seen was a lady from Jet2 holidays, who was tirelessly pulling Jet2-marked bags off and making her own pile of customers’ bags. Where were the airport staff? The queue (crowd!) at baggage queries was at least thirty people thick, and the same number wide.
We tried for an hour, but it was nigh-on impossible to move, let alone find one small case amongst the thousands there. People pushing trolleys blocked the traffic; elderly travellers propped themselves up on suitcases; babies, including mine, howled. Eventually I had to give up and abandoned my bag to the bowels of the airport. As I left, the police were arriving. Still no sign of airport staff.
Then to the luggage arrivals hall. This was like a scene from a horror film
Now where? Once glance at the taxi queue told me, as suspected, that was a bad idea. Luckily, we were fairly local so a train, a taxi, then a car, and we were home, 12 hours after we left.
The fun bit now is the admin. My flight was rebooked to this afternoon, travelling via Sweden; but the meeting I was travelling for was at midday, so that’s no good. With no calls being answered, I spoke to a chatbot, who told me they can’t cancel my new flight as I have luggage checked in. Her advice was to just not show up. Will I get a refund? Who knows.
As for my bag, again, with phonelines blocked the internet was my only hope. I’ve registered it as ‘missing’ with Gatwick Lost and Found Services and now, I suppose, we pray.
I know we were the lucky ones. We were in our own country, not far from home. I wasn’t travelling for something vitally important and, fortunately, this chaos happened in my mother tongue. For anyone foreign, far from home, or with an urgent appointment, the experience would have been far, far worse. This was not, I’m afraid to say, England at its best.
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