9/8/2006 - London Heathrow

Although it said on the papers from my travel agency, that the flight would take over an hour, it couldn't possibly have taken even so much as 45 minutes, and the plane even had to take a longer route to get around a thunderstorm. The rest of the time was needed for the plane to find a gate to dock with. Heathrow is a very busy airport, which serves the strangest destinations throughout the world, so it's just a fact of life that planes sometimes have to wait.

When we finally did get off the plane, there were complimentary newspapers waiting for the passengers. I naively took one. 200 yards ahead there were preliminary security checks where people weren't even searched yet. Just their liquids, books, papers, etc. were taken away from them before they joined the waiting lines for the real deal.

When I joined the lines I happened upon the two passengers I had met at Schiphol, who were headed for Thailand, so we started talking again. It was mostly jokes about the situation we were in. Jokes about how these inspections were pointless, etc. I mean, the biggest danger to airline passengers isn't even terrorism, but drunk passengers bursting out in air rage. Not being allowed to take liquids on board doesn't mean the airlines don't. And what if a passenger buys a bottle of Bacardi during the duty-free sale, drinks it up, goes berserk and smashes the bottle? You'd be dealing with an armed and dangerous madman, courtesy of the airline's duty free booze.

Other things we commented on were the apparent girl scouts who had been hired to carry out the security checks. I swear, they were very young women in girl scout uniforms... I wonder if they knew that at Homeland Security in DC.

Just when we were about to go to the security gates, one of the guys who were traveling to Thailand, a thirty-ish guy who organized sailing adventures worldwide, and was now going to do so in Thailand for six months, discovered he still had his cell phone with him, containing all of his contact phone numbers in places all over Thailand. He could of course not give it up, so he was told to go back into the terminal, find his airline there and check in his phone. He would also have to go thru the whole waiting in line again. I hope he made his plane, because according to the screens in terminal three it took off right in time.

For the rest of us, the entire process only took about 45 minutes or so, but of course it was only early morning in London. I later heard that by 12 noon, people were stuck in these lines for hours and hours. I could easily have made it onto the plane I had originally been booked on. Oh well, I now got the full Heathrow Experience. Fortunately there wasn't another security check upon entering Terminal 3, from which my plane to Montreal would take off.

It wasn't a bad place to spend a few hours. Water was sold abundantly, the shops were interesting enough, news papers were lying around everywhere. For a couple of hours I was OK. But then my feet started killing me, and by 2 PM I just had to sit down, and from there on I was simply bored. Fortunately around 2.30, my plane was assigned to gate 26, so with my feet screaming bloody murder I made my way there. It even seemed as if they would board the passengers immediately -they even said they would only be fifteen minutes- but by 3.45 we had only been guided into a waiting room, that looked as if it hadn't seen a fresh lick of paint since the first world war. In fact the building looked as if it had been built in Medieval times. It turned out that even the pilots were closely scrutinized before being allowed thru.

We were let on board around 4.15, but they really should have kept us in the waiting room a little longer. Many passengers were still stuck in the security proceedings, and the crew decided they would wait until every last on of them was on board. I  had been assigned to an aisle seat with no leg space, and for the next hour I kept wondering if someone would show up for the window seat next to me, so even with the agony I was in I didn't feel at ease sitting back and relax occupying both seats.

Fortunately after that hour, we were complete, and no one did show up for that window seat, so the flight turned out to be quite comfortable. We were stuck on the runway for another twenty minutes or so, however. Ahead of ours I could see about sixteen planes lined up, all waiting for clearance to leave. A funny sight, I must say!