Drama, drama, drama...


Advertisement
United States' flag
North America » United States » Nevada » Las Vegas
December 27th 2010
Published: December 30th 2010
Edit Blog Post

Oh what a night...!!!
Wednesday 22nd December - Day 82
We woke up at 5:45am this morning to check on our flight leaving Heathrow. Many flights had been cancelled or really delayed over the past week with the bad weather across England. Heathrow had been closed up until yesterday afternoon. The funny thing is that there is only 5cm of snow out there, they just don't have the resources to clear it!! Our flight was on the list for the confirmed departures for today but it was already delayed until 11:50am (originally 10:25am), we got up anyway, packed and headed out 'cos it was going to be mayhem with all the people stuck at the airport! We walked to the tube station and then sat for 30 mins on the train, it wasn't packed but full. They made an announcement over the loud speaker waring passengers that if their flight was not on the confirmed list for today that they wouldn't even be allowed in the airport and when we got there it was true! Poor people... There was no line up for check-in just the bag drop but it didn't take too long, we were through security and at the eating area by 8:30am so we spared a moment for breakfast (we had plenty of time now!). We didn't have any internet though because the Hotspot service we had joined a the hotel did not have service at the airport. It's funny you know, we have been in so so many airports all over the world but do you think any of them have the same Hotspot provider??!! Crazy... so instead we walked around for a while. Finally they announced our Gate number so we walked the 15 mins out to it, boarded and were then left waiting on the tarmac... For unbeknown reasons, not explained to passengers, it took us a while to actually get moving and then there is the really long taxi to the runway and we FINALLY took off at 12:45pm. Now that's all well and good we were now scheduled to touch down in Los Angeles 10 hours and 50 mins later at 2:45pm local time. Our connection to vegas didn't depart until 5:05pm so we weren't worried, by this time, our 3rd visit to LAX we knew the lay of the land so we st back and enjoyed the ride... 11 hours seems so much longer during the day... Well, we ended up being delayed by headwinds and didn't touch down until 3:30pm (still okay)... then the problems begin... because we landed after 2pm the airline had to dock at Terminal 7 as normal, unload the baggage (30 mins - stuck on the plane), then bus all passengers (15 mins) to the Tom Bradley Terminal to clear immigration and customs, then for all connecting passengers with flights departing before 5pm, they had been rebooked onto new flights (as they missed connections), unfortunately for us our flight was departing at 5:05pm so nothing had been re-booked and we had 15 mins to get to our flight (not going to happen). Fortunately the airline advised us that if we go down to Terminal 7 (good 10 min walk) they would re-book us on the 10:49pm flight tonight... but you see the problem is that all the missed connections plus the 8:15pm cancelled flight passengers were being re-booked onto this flight, when we got to Terminal 7 the line was huge! We were put on standby for the 10:49pm, we tried to get it out of them how likely it was that we would get on but they kept saying that they couldn't say until closer to departure so we waited it out until 10:30pm, again no internet because, funny that, again a different Hotspot provider!!!! 10:30pm came round and they published the stand-by list, we were 18th and 21st out of 30 with only 2 available seats left after check-in closed... no way we would make it... The airline kindly re-booked us onto the next departing flight but it wasn't until 6:30am and we were still on standby as all flights for tomorrow were fully booked. We phoned another airline that had plenty of seats but they were around $170 each so we decided we would wait it out at the airport, only 5 1/2 hours til we had to be back anyways... we pulled up a row of seats and a path of carpet along with a few other stranded passengers and tried to get a few winks in... Mish managed to get a couple of hours but Jess struggled. At 3am, Jess got up to find a restroom and also checked the departure board (just for fun!)... ... great... ... our flight had been delayed until 8:30am due to crew difficulties and was now departing from a different Gate number to the one where we were sleeping....
Frustrated and so so tired, Jess woke up Mish to tell him the good news... There were some other passengers on our flight from London that were ahead of us in the line at Terminal 7 so they had been re-booked on a 7:30am flight with US airways so we decided we would go down to check-in and try and get on that one instead... Once we got downstairs people were already lining up for the day's flights and check-in didn't open until 4:00am, so we waited in line again 😊. The kind check-in lady, tried to help us but said we were best to stay on the flight that we had been booked on as there was nothing else all day, she was able to tell us that we were 12th and 13th on the standby list, so for us still no possibility of actually leaving today. We pretty much gave up on the flying idea and caught the shuttle bus to AVIS, hired the cheapest car possible and drove the 4 hours to Vegas. The funny thing is our bags actually flew to Vegas on that 10:49pm flight last night, so we were hoping they would be at the airport when we got there.
We had a pit stop at Mc Donalds in Barstow about halfway, to eat (Jess hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours!) and to revive to survive... Amazingly enough, by the time we reached Vegas, returned the car and caught the shuttle to the airport, when we arrived to collect our bags, the flight from LA had just landed and their bags were coming out on the carousel too, the thing is, there was still that big chance that we wouldn't have got onto that flight, so we were thankful that we had driven! If we had of known that we wouldn't have got on last night we would have drove straight away instead of sleeping at the airport.
Anyways, we'd made it, we caught the bus to our hotel, New York New York, our reservation was still there (Jess had only called 3 times during the night to let them know we were still coming) so we checked in and went up to our room. We sat in our spa bath for about 20 mins, then showered and decided to nap for 3 hours before getting some lunch and starting to have a look around.... unfortunately we both slept through thte alarms and Jess woke Mish up at 9:30pm that night, enquiring what time it was as it was darkoutside!
What to do next?? do we get up and go party, as the night was still young or do we try and sleep it out til morning? SHOULD have got up and went partying, but instead we were both lying wide awake at 3:00am...

Advertisement



30th December 2010

oh dear
oh dear you poor pair - hope heathrow is sorted by 9th Jan!!! Great to know you are in vegas at last - have a lovely time. I guess you are off to europe again today or tomoro!!! How wonderful to be young! loved to you both and happy new year xxxxx(mum n dad)
31st December 2010

I guess you are probably sick of airports by now. Not many left to go. Trust that all the others will be clear. Hope you will enjoy Egypt.

Tot: 0.183s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 12; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0753s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb