According to\u00c2\u00a0my initial\u00c2\u00a0plan of 5 months ago, today I was flying to London to spend a week meeting some friends before flying back to San\u00c2\u00a0Francisco on the 17th.<\/p>\n
Well,\u00c2\u00a0as often, the plan did not work out as expected. As I\u00c2\u00a0arrived at the airport, I was greeted by\u00c2\u00a0a screen showing that all the flights to London had been cancelled!<\/p>\n
The only explanation I got for a while was that\u00c2\u00a0Heathrow had been closed for the day\u00c2\u00a0by the BAA and I had to\u00c2\u00a0book another\u00c2\u00a0flight. So I\u00c2\u00a0queued in the very long line leading to the BA sales counters and started waiting in order to reschedule.<\/p>\n
After\u00c2\u00a0discussing\u00c2\u00a0with other passengers and through two interviews (yes, I am that on demand!) with\u00c2\u00a0journalists from BBC and Le Figaro that were\u00c2\u00a0gravitating around the queue with tens of others, I finally understood that the British government had closed the airport following fears of a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
1 hour had passed and I had only progressed 20 meters in the 100 meter long line. It was worst than the lines at the Buzz Lightyear attraction at Disneyland or\u00c2\u00a0at the Eiffel Tower some days before! The reason was that\u00c2\u00a0there were only 2 BA associates to help the hundreds of stranded passengers so it could not go any faster. For their discharge, it does not seem like they are equipped to do any better.<\/p>\n
Some very nice Paris Airport employees were on duty to help the passengers distributing bottles of water and giving British Airways reservation line and Eurostar reservation line phone numbers.\u00c2\u00a0Too bad they did not have more information to provide us though. Still, most of the people were calm (and resigned?).<\/p>\n
After seeing a\u00c2\u00a0guy bound to New York (that was holding every possible gold membership card of every possible\u00c2\u00a0airline) get\u00c2\u00a0transferred on another flight and a family bound to Montreal get rescheduled\u00c2\u00a0for\u00c2\u00a0Saturday morning, both after calling the BA reservation line, I thought I could also give it a try.\u00c2\u00a0Not having any cellphone, I tried to use one of the\u00c2\u00a0public phone but it turned out the phone number was not toll-free so I had to give up that option and thought it should not be that long before I get to the window.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strike that! 3 hours since I arrived at the airport and I had only progressed 40 meters in the now 150 meter long line (how much I had left to do is left as an exercise to the reader). To make matters worst, one of the airport employees came around telling us there would not be any flights to London today so I should better just go back home and call the reservation line from there.<\/p>\n
Well, I thought it was not a bad idea and made my way back home. $160 poorer but safe.<\/p>\n
From there, I managed to reschedule my flight for Saturday morning. On the bright side, I have two more days to be with my parents and enjoy Paris.<\/p>\n
And if you wonder\u00c2\u00a0why I am still going to\u00c2\u00a0London, you can read what I think of terrorism\u00c2\u00a0on a piece\u00c2\u00a0I wrote previously about Dahab<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to\u00c2\u00a0my initial\u00c2\u00a0plan of 5 months ago, today I was flying to London to spend a week meeting some friends before flying back to San\u00c2\u00a0Francisco on the 17th. Well,\u00c2\u00a0as often, the plan did not work out as expected. As I\u00c2\u00a0arrived … Continue reading