Thanks for your kind words, LondonElite! To answer your questions:

- I live here, so this was my inbound flight. Had no problems on the outbound to Germany (which was with Singapore Airlines).
- good point about the insurance: I haven't looked into it yet. I do remember we were only covered until the 29th though (the day we got back), so I'm not even sure if we can still claim! (Never done a claim in my life, so.) But I'll definitely take a look.
- I have been in touch with one of the guys, but he's not at work sometimes (I think they do shifts) so some days I've had to talk to a few others. I know a few of them by name though and the person who took my call today (whom I hadn't yet spoken to) knew about my case so it seems like it's pretty notorious now. You raise a good point though, and I'm going to try to get one person on it as much as possible.