Mick whittingham's desperate jourrney

Mick W has been on holiday this last week in Sharm, "not diving" as he
put it.

The last 24 hours have seen an endless stream of SMS messages to and
from the Chateau, as he tried to find out what was happening with
flights into Gatwick. Especially his.

This was complicated by the fact that Gatwick's 'arrivals and
departures' server had crashed under the strain.

This evening, he was sitting in the airport there, wondering if he'd get
home.

Final message, from the long white-haired portly Mr W, and I just hope
he was wearing a red jerkin.

"Stroking my long white heard, I told the boss of check-in that if I did
not get to England, lots of kids would be unhappy this Christmas. Got
bumped to an earlier flight."

Way to go. Ukrm ingenuity triumphs again.

 

You have to give him 10/10 for that particular trick. I doubt I'll be
pull such a routine to get *out* of the country. Even though I don't
fly until Friday I am already expecting a cancellation if we get any
more snow. It really is a complete bloody shambles.

 

I'm supposed to be flying on Tuesday - disinformation appears to be
rife about what's actually happening.

 

To be honest I don't think they know. BA's website is a shambles. I
looked at Cathay Pacific who are quite clear about the status of their
flights and what they will fly tomorrow. They obviously know what
Heathrow are intending to do in terms of resuming flights.

They are also clear about what has happened to flights over the last 2-3
days, what has been diverted and where and what passengers should do.
It is a model of clarity when set against "Willy Airlines" and I
recognise BA have a far bigger task on their hands than Cathay do. God
knows what an outfit like Ryanair are doing.

I shall be checking with Trailfinders tomorrow as to what redress, if
any, I will have in the event of a continued **** up.

 

Indeed. Despite all of the technology the quality of information given
out is pretty poor to say the least. They've been saying all day on TV
and radio that there were no flights into LHR, yet BA kept insisting W's
flight home was merely delayed. Several hours after the scheduled
departure time it was finally cancelled.

Gah.

They're giving up on flying and going to try getting the train home
(from Berlin).

It's going to be a painful insurance claim.

 

Top stuff.

 

<Applause>

Give that man a mince pie and a glass of sherry

Boxerboy

 

Heh. +1 for the effort.

 

Good thing it wasn't misconstrued.
"Sir, that sounds like a threat. Would you mind stepping over here,
please?"

 

I'd like to say a big thank you to Neil for keeping me up to date with
the info from Gatwick. We just got home, after a slow but uneventful
drive to West Norfolk. Absolutely *NO* information available from the
reps that was concrete enough to plan ahead with.

I needed an AA call out at the hotel where I had parked my car. The guy
who moved it to the collection point two days ago played with *all* the
switches and left the radio on traffic, internal sonic alarms on etc. So
I had a flat battery.

Ho Hum. A fortnights diving from Sharm with no dives[1]. There are some
brilliant 'shark eats tourist' T shirts being sold there though.

[1] We can bus you to Taba each day, it's only four and a half hours
each way.

 

I'm flying tomorrow is the plan. I've relocated further north to get
away from the Heathrow/Gatwick shambles. Let's hope the regional
airports have their act together better ....

Paul.