Advertisement
Published: November 15th 2007
Edit Blog Post
View from the hotel room
Radisson SAS Hotel @ Manchester Airport On the morning of Saturday 10th November we woke up at 4 am raring to go. We stayed overnight at the Radisson SAS hotel at Manchester Airport as it is connected to each terminal there via a skywalk so thought as we had so much luggage it would save us time. We walked over to Terminal 3 to check in the luggage for our shuttle flight down to Heathrow and thought that as we had 2 hours we would have plenty of time.
Unfortunately, the queues were massive as everyone seemed to have the same idea! We joined the queues and quite quickly moved along until we got to checkin but as were double the limit we had to then go to Customer Services to pay for the excess before we then had to join the queue again at checkin. This is the time I started to panic as it was now 5.45 and our flight was due to take off at 7.00 am. We queued up at Customer Services and eventually made it to the front of the queue and spoke to a lovely lady there. She calculated that the excess luggage would cost us £240 as we didn’t
have much choice I handed over my card. She then tried about 4 times to swipe the card but her machine wasn’t working and it wouldn’t go through. She then went to speak to a supervisor to explain what was happening. She came back and said that as their machine wasn’t working I didn’t have to pay for the excess! I could have cried as I know how rare BA are to do anything nice for customers! She gave us a voucher and then told us to join the queue at the front to save time for us.
By the time we checked in it was now 6.20 am so we ran back to the hotel and I had the quickest shower I have ever had! We packed up our hand luggage and ran back to Terminal 3 to be greeted by huge queues at security and passport control. We pushed our way to the front of the queues pleading with people to let us get through as we were going to miss our flights and eventually made it to the xtay machines where as normal I set everything going .. the time was now 06.50 and check in
Are we nearly there yet?
Stats from the flight Heathrow to Singapore ... was now supposed to be closed.
I pleaded with security that I was going to miss my flight but she insisted that we take the laptop out of the bag and pass it through the xray machine again and then I had to take off my boots and put them in the xray machine .. by now I honestly could feel myself welling up and the tears were in my eyes .. she passed me my boots and then from nowhere a guy where a yellow jacket met us asking if we were 'the Martins' we said yes and we were ushered through a side door straight onto the gate for our flight and onto the plane (me in my socks as I was still holding my boots!) where we sat down and promptly were delayed for 15 minutes .. not too sure if we delayed it or not but thankfully we had made the flight.
At Heathrow we had 3 hours to wait for our flight so given that we were having a bad day with time etc we found the gate and sat there just in case!
The flights into Singapore and Perth were as
normal boring as ever but we managed to sleep for most of the way as it is the only way not to get jetlag. We landed in Perth at 3.30 on Sunday 11th November straight into the hottest day of the year Perth has had up to now - typical! We were boiling!! We waited for our suitcases and 3 of them came off quite quickly but no sign of the big blue one that had all our leaving presents in from friends and family we lodged a complaint with the baggage desk and he said it had more than likely been held up at Heathrow (got it back 3 days later - as it had been taken by security at Heathrow and opened up for the contents to be screened - apparently something about dangerous fountain pens and evil koala bears dressed in the union jack pants!!!)
So anyhow .. we are now here in Perth and just waiting for tomorrow for our first full day in Australia!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0681s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb
Foggy
Sarah
Welcome to Oz !!
Welcome to Oz Jo - I'm still 4 hrs away and (I think) 2 hours ahead but you're a lot closer than you were !!! I'll email you our phone number !!! Hope the jet lag doesn't get you down. Sarah X