UK Stages, I found myself in a somewhat similar situation at LHR at the end of October. Because of a severe storm, my BA flight from BLQ arrived three hours late, so I missed AA57 to Miami (the only US bound AA flight to leave somewhat on time that day...
). C'est la vie. What troubled me, however, was how completely disorganized and rude were all the AA employees who had to rebook the countless passengers who missed their connections. There wasn't even a shadow of a Platinum line. In fact, there was no line at all, and you had to push through squirming groups of agitated passengers to make your way to the counter. The agents were basically unconcerned with the chaos in front of them, and never once made the least attempt to get some order in the waiting crowd, let alone invite Plt. Gld and ExPlt. to come forward.
When I finally reached the counter, all the confirmed seats for the day had gone. I asked about an operational upgrade and was scoffed at (I was Plt. at the time). Finally, the agent gave me a stand-by boarding pass for the flight to EWR and curtly told me to rush to the gate. I did, and luckily the gate agents found me a bulkhead aisle in coach, so I made it back in relative comfort (it was an Airbus). Moral of the story: don't expect most LHR agents to take your status into account - whether you flaunt it (which I would NEVER do) or be really discreet about it, it means nothing to them. I occasionally run into this attitude at other airports (JFK, ORD, DFW come to mind), but it seems that LHR has it in an exceptionally high degree... or am I imagining this?