2010 BritMas, Part One: We're Diverting To WHERE?
As many of you already know, I am married to a Bodacious Brit, and we returned to the motherland in May of 2010 for a visit with friends and family. One of the friends we visited was Lyndon's university buddy Vicar Man, a rather wonderful Anglican priest with a puckish sense of humor who has been known to base homilies on Pink Floyd lyrics and the works of Machiavelli.
During a lunch with VM and his lovely family, he started talking about the carol service he would be performing the week before Christmas, and the Brit got rather wistful, saying that he'd never been able to make a carol service since university because something would always stop him from attending (this, by the by, is foreshadowing).
Well, I said brightly, why don't we come back over Christmas and attend VM's carol service? This was deemed well and good because it meant we could also see our new niece (who was still gestating at this point), and spend some time in London.
And so plane tickets were duly booked, hotel rooms and rental cars were reserved, and on December 17th we boarded the direct AA Flight 78 overnight to Heathrow. Eight hours in an economy (or as we like to call it, steerage) seat is never really the most comfortable way to travel internationally, so we were more than a little tired and achy as the plane finally started its descent into London.
Suddenly, the nose of the plane went back up again, and the pilot came on the PA. A massive winter snow storm had slammed into much of Northern Europe overnight, dumping six inches of snow alone on London (and Heathrow) and seriously fouling up air and ground travel. Now, I can hear the people from Chicago, Montreal and Sweden laughing heartily at the idea of six inches of snow causing this kind of havoc, but you have to understand that Southern England (and Heathrow) isn't set up to handle that kind of snow, and were now in some serious trouble.
So, the UK's biggest airport was temporarily closed, the pilot explained, and we were going to circle for an hour to see if the ground crew could get enough runway cleared in order for us to land. Neither the Brit nor I were particularly happy about this, but it wasn't like we could get down there ourselves and shovel, so we sat back and prepared to wait.
An hour later, the pilot came back on the PA -- Heathrow would be closed for the rest of the day, we were running low on fuel, and thus we would be diverting to another airport. The Brit started murmuring about landing at Birmingham or even Manchester and how this could actually work out to our advantage, when we found out where exactly we would be landing.
Paris.
The hell? I still don't understand the logic of this, especially as we found out later that Gatwick Airport had never closed and could take planes of our size -- but no, American Airlines in their infinite wisdom decided to send us to France instead. So, another hour went by before we finally landed at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, where we proceeded to:
1) Spend yet another hour on the runway (note that this brings our time in uncomfortable economy seats up to 11 hours) because The Powers That Be decided to refuel our plane and send us back to Heathrow to circle some more, until
2) They found out that yes, Heathrow would definitely be closed for the rest of the day, no doubt about it, at which point they had to find us somewhere to stay, along with the thousands of other travelers who have been diverted from Heathrow and other closed airports (apparently Frankfurt got SLAMMED with diverted flights), so
3) we waited for another hour (12 in total) until an AA rep boarded the plane and started handing out vouchers for hotel rooms, and
4) promptly ran out of them before he hit our row. Whee.
We were then told to get off the plane, collect our luggage and hit the AA ticket counter for more hotel vouchers. By this point, I'd developed a close, personal relationship with Lissie*, a 2-year-old girl sitting in the seat in front of me (who had a bad cough, decided to call me Miss Hilary for some reason and really liked my jewelry) and her 5- and 7-year-old brothers Luke* and Will*, whose parents were also short a hotel room and were frantically trying to figure out how to get their brood to Devon in one piece.
At least we could stand up, though, so we finally got off the plane and shuffled into the luggage zone, where we found out that since they weren't expecting us to land, we'd been deposited at a gate with a non-functioning luggage system, and they had to find enough luggage handlers to pull it off the plane manually and deliver it to the zone. Three guesses how long this particular procedure took? Mrrph.
So, while we stood around waiting for yet another hour I pulled out my cell phone and got cracking -- texted various folks with the situation (my sister's response: "You got diverted to PARIS? My heart bleeds"), called around to cancel hotel rooms and rebook our rental car, all the while painfully aware that the battery power on my phone was dropping steadily (at that point I didn't give much of a toss about international calls -- somehow, I already knew that this was going to be an unexpectedly expensive vacation. And yes, that's more foreshadowing).
Our luggage did finally arrive, which meant we could go through Immigration (I don't think they were even bothering with Customs at that point). Lyndon went straight through as he's an EU citizen -- since I didn't bring our marriage certificate, however, I had to go through the Non-EU line, which was actually very short but was also where an incredibly cranky young woman was giving a tired and frazzled flight attendant grief for not speaking French. The attendant finally got her passport stamped, and I stepped up in time to hear, "I suppose YOU don't speak French, either," sneered at me.
I sneered back and said, "Je parle un peu français. J'ai vécu au Québec pendant deux ans."
"D'accord!"
STAMP, and my passport was flung at me. Thank you Ericsson Trailing Spouse Language Program, I thought to myself as I rejoined Lyndon and emerged at 4:00 PM local time into utter freaking chaos. The main concourse of CdG had become a shifting, shouting web of lines going EVERYWHERE, with diverted and stranded travelers just trying to find somewhere to sleep or another way out of Paris.
At which point we caught the first break of the day; before we joined the ever-growing line in front of the AA ticket counter, I spotted the AA rep who had been handing out vouchers and snagged him with a big dimpled smile, asking if he had any more vouchers.
Et voila, we became the proud possessors of a single room at the Hyatt Regency, Roissy, at which point we joined yet another line to get on a bus to the hotel (but at least we had a place to sleep, dammit). While waiting I took video for the inevitable video podcast, texted my friend Theresa to post a statement on my Facebook page explaining what happened, and chatted more with Lissie and her brothers (who were right behind us in line with their parents and one massively overloaded luggage trolley).
By 6:00 PM we were in our small but blessedly clean hotel room, taking turns in the shower, grumbling over the fact that we couldn't charge our cell phones or computers due to a marked lack of Continental converter plugs (we have tons of them from our time in Holland and Sweden, but as we hadn't planned on being diverted to frigging PARIS we hadn't brought any), and waiting for room service while we checking weather reports. The snow in England showed no sign of abating, and TPTB at Heathrow thought that they might be open as of 12/19, but they couldn't be sure. As we'd been told by the AA rep to be in the lobby at 7:00 AM sharp to board a bus to CdG and get on a 10:00 AM flight back to Heathrow, all we could do was try to catch a couple hours of sleep and hope that we'd be able to fly to England tomorrow.
So we did.
Coming tomorrow -- 2010 BritMas, Part Two: To the Eurostar, Robin!
*Names changed because they're someone else's kids and that's how I roll.
During a lunch with VM and his lovely family, he started talking about the carol service he would be performing the week before Christmas, and the Brit got rather wistful, saying that he'd never been able to make a carol service since university because something would always stop him from attending (this, by the by, is foreshadowing).
Well, I said brightly, why don't we come back over Christmas and attend VM's carol service? This was deemed well and good because it meant we could also see our new niece (who was still gestating at this point), and spend some time in London.
And so plane tickets were duly booked, hotel rooms and rental cars were reserved, and on December 17th we boarded the direct AA Flight 78 overnight to Heathrow. Eight hours in an economy (or as we like to call it, steerage) seat is never really the most comfortable way to travel internationally, so we were more than a little tired and achy as the plane finally started its descent into London.
Suddenly, the nose of the plane went back up again, and the pilot came on the PA. A massive winter snow storm had slammed into much of Northern Europe overnight, dumping six inches of snow alone on London (and Heathrow) and seriously fouling up air and ground travel. Now, I can hear the people from Chicago, Montreal and Sweden laughing heartily at the idea of six inches of snow causing this kind of havoc, but you have to understand that Southern England (and Heathrow) isn't set up to handle that kind of snow, and were now in some serious trouble.
So, the UK's biggest airport was temporarily closed, the pilot explained, and we were going to circle for an hour to see if the ground crew could get enough runway cleared in order for us to land. Neither the Brit nor I were particularly happy about this, but it wasn't like we could get down there ourselves and shovel, so we sat back and prepared to wait.
An hour later, the pilot came back on the PA -- Heathrow would be closed for the rest of the day, we were running low on fuel, and thus we would be diverting to another airport. The Brit started murmuring about landing at Birmingham or even Manchester and how this could actually work out to our advantage, when we found out where exactly we would be landing.
Paris.
The hell? I still don't understand the logic of this, especially as we found out later that Gatwick Airport had never closed and could take planes of our size -- but no, American Airlines in their infinite wisdom decided to send us to France instead. So, another hour went by before we finally landed at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, where we proceeded to:
1) Spend yet another hour on the runway (note that this brings our time in uncomfortable economy seats up to 11 hours) because The Powers That Be decided to refuel our plane and send us back to Heathrow to circle some more, until
2) They found out that yes, Heathrow would definitely be closed for the rest of the day, no doubt about it, at which point they had to find us somewhere to stay, along with the thousands of other travelers who have been diverted from Heathrow and other closed airports (apparently Frankfurt got SLAMMED with diverted flights), so
3) we waited for another hour (12 in total) until an AA rep boarded the plane and started handing out vouchers for hotel rooms, and
4) promptly ran out of them before he hit our row. Whee.
We were then told to get off the plane, collect our luggage and hit the AA ticket counter for more hotel vouchers. By this point, I'd developed a close, personal relationship with Lissie*, a 2-year-old girl sitting in the seat in front of me (who had a bad cough, decided to call me Miss Hilary for some reason and really liked my jewelry) and her 5- and 7-year-old brothers Luke* and Will*, whose parents were also short a hotel room and were frantically trying to figure out how to get their brood to Devon in one piece.
At least we could stand up, though, so we finally got off the plane and shuffled into the luggage zone, where we found out that since they weren't expecting us to land, we'd been deposited at a gate with a non-functioning luggage system, and they had to find enough luggage handlers to pull it off the plane manually and deliver it to the zone. Three guesses how long this particular procedure took? Mrrph.
So, while we stood around waiting for yet another hour I pulled out my cell phone and got cracking -- texted various folks with the situation (my sister's response: "You got diverted to PARIS? My heart bleeds"), called around to cancel hotel rooms and rebook our rental car, all the while painfully aware that the battery power on my phone was dropping steadily (at that point I didn't give much of a toss about international calls -- somehow, I already knew that this was going to be an unexpectedly expensive vacation. And yes, that's more foreshadowing).
Our luggage did finally arrive, which meant we could go through Immigration (I don't think they were even bothering with Customs at that point). Lyndon went straight through as he's an EU citizen -- since I didn't bring our marriage certificate, however, I had to go through the Non-EU line, which was actually very short but was also where an incredibly cranky young woman was giving a tired and frazzled flight attendant grief for not speaking French. The attendant finally got her passport stamped, and I stepped up in time to hear, "I suppose YOU don't speak French, either," sneered at me.
I sneered back and said, "Je parle un peu français. J'ai vécu au Québec pendant deux ans."
"D'accord!"
STAMP, and my passport was flung at me. Thank you Ericsson Trailing Spouse Language Program, I thought to myself as I rejoined Lyndon and emerged at 4:00 PM local time into utter freaking chaos. The main concourse of CdG had become a shifting, shouting web of lines going EVERYWHERE, with diverted and stranded travelers just trying to find somewhere to sleep or another way out of Paris.
At which point we caught the first break of the day; before we joined the ever-growing line in front of the AA ticket counter, I spotted the AA rep who had been handing out vouchers and snagged him with a big dimpled smile, asking if he had any more vouchers.
Et voila, we became the proud possessors of a single room at the Hyatt Regency, Roissy, at which point we joined yet another line to get on a bus to the hotel (but at least we had a place to sleep, dammit). While waiting I took video for the inevitable video podcast, texted my friend Theresa to post a statement on my Facebook page explaining what happened, and chatted more with Lissie and her brothers (who were right behind us in line with their parents and one massively overloaded luggage trolley).
By 6:00 PM we were in our small but blessedly clean hotel room, taking turns in the shower, grumbling over the fact that we couldn't charge our cell phones or computers due to a marked lack of Continental converter plugs (we have tons of them from our time in Holland and Sweden, but as we hadn't planned on being diverted to frigging PARIS we hadn't brought any), and waiting for room service while we checking weather reports. The snow in England showed no sign of abating, and TPTB at Heathrow thought that they might be open as of 12/19, but they couldn't be sure. As we'd been told by the AA rep to be in the lobby at 7:00 AM sharp to board a bus to CdG and get on a 10:00 AM flight back to Heathrow, all we could do was try to catch a couple hours of sleep and hope that we'd be able to fly to England tomorrow.
So we did.
Coming tomorrow -- 2010 BritMas, Part Two: To the Eurostar, Robin!
*Names changed because they're someone else's kids and that's how I roll.