Apologies for the delay in posting. Been a bit busy.
I've decided to add a random statistic of the week as well
Week 25 (BA Miles earned last month: 28,078)
An easy week in prospect, as I have booked Thursday and Friday as holidays to celebrate my daughter’s 21st birthday.
I also have an easy start, as I work from home on Monday morning, before driving up to Glasgow to fly out to Zurich. I’ve booked the route out via LGW as it’s a faster and more convenient trip when travelling in the afternoon.
The trip down to LGW passes faultlessly, and I am soon in the terraces lounge at LGW. Logging on to the wireless network there to check my e-mails, I discover that my laptop is due for replacement, so I arrange to do the swap next week (I have to go to our London office for that), and look forward to something that is newer and better than what I have at the moment. Please don’t ask me what I’ve got. Although I’m technically switched on, I see it as totally irrelevant whether I have a 2.4GHz processor or what sort of RAM I’ve got. For typical work related stuff, these things are absolutely immaterial. The only things I need from my new laptop are a larger hard drive (basically so I can put all my music on it), and a better networking system, as my current set-up requires a lot of messing about and occasional reboots when changing from one networked environment (say office LAN) to another, (say wireless), and last, but not least fewer crashes. The Blue Screen of death appears a couple of times a week at the moment, which is way too often.
When the flight is called at LGW, I discover that the gate is one of the new ones they’ve just built, and I have to go over a huge bridge to get to them. The view from the top is pretty spectacular, and I can look down on planes landing on the distant runway. On time arrival, and taxi to the Marriott.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we work further on our material for the client, and then I manage to escape early to fly home. For some reason, OLCI hasn’t worked so I have to check in at the desk. Unfortunately, the check in agent is being particularly Swiss about cabin baggage and demands to weigh my bag. Inevitably it is too heavy. The 6Kg limit for cabin baggage on BA is ridiculous, and the agent tells me that she can’t let my bag on board for safety reasons. When I point out to her that if I were flying Club, I would be within BA’s weight limit, she shuts up. However, despite all my negotiating skills, and asides about BA losing it the last time I flew with them, I have to check it. Things get more frustrating as the agent tells me the flight is late, and I am rebooked onto a later flight to GLA.
I make my way to the lounge in Terminal E, and make myself comfortable. It is a searingly hot day, and I am sticky and thirsty. I take a litre bottle of water from the fridge, go to my seat and prepare to drink when the lounge dragon pounces. It is not permitted to take a bottle of water to your seat, only a glass. Knowing the Swiss and their ways, resistance is futile, but I make her wait until I have drained 3 glasses of water straight down, before refilling my glass for the fourth time and letting her take what is by now an almost empty bottle back to the fridge.
The flight is called and after enduring the boarding scrum, (BA’s boarding procedure at ZRH is totally, utterly and completely hopeless), I climb on board. Nothing happens for a few minutes, then the pilot comes on to tell us he has a problem with the GPS, which thinks we’re about 400 miles from Zurich, and needs to get this fixed before we take off. This doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. He tells us he wants to “control alt delete” the plane. Which presumably means shutting down all the systems and restarting them again. This doesn’t work and time passes. I call the travel agency and they tell me that the 1915 is the latest BA flight to get me back to GLA tonight. However I know there is a 1715 to LHR and wonder about getting on that (It is now 1645). At this point the captain comes on the tannoy and tells us he is still trying to get the plane fixed, and there is nothing we (the passengers) can do as there are no alternative flights to LHR tonight, As there are 2 BA flights plus 2 Swiss ones, this is a downright lie. It is compounded when he comes on 10 minutes later to tell us that BA are rebooking us all onto alternate BA and Swiss flights to LHR.
However, miracle or miracles, he suddenly announced that the problem had been fixed and we could take off. This we did and as we got nearer to London, so it seems the chances of me making my connection evaporates. The connection is due to leave at 1850 and my boarding card states that the gate will close at 1830. However, we are due to land at Terminal 4 and I will be taking off from Terminal 1. It is 1800 and we are still in a holding pattern over Kent somewhere and I am wondering when the next flight to GLA will depart and more to the point will I get a seat on it. Odds are all flights will be full until the very last one.
We finally land at LHR at around 1815, and taxi to a remote stand. To add insult to injury the bus isn’t there to take us to the terminal and people stand and wait in the cramped pre-disembarkation poses for fully 10 minutes. By this stage, my opinion of BA is so low, you would need to sink a mineshaft to reach it. However as I emerge into the London afternoon, my heart is gladdened by the sight of someone holding a card with BA1494 Glasgow on it. Together with some passengers for Cork, I am driven directly to the flight connections centre, and we are taken to security where amazingly there is no queue. After a brisk walk along the connecting corridor, I join the end of the queue at Gate 74 where the last few people are waiting to board. BA have suddenly gone up a few notches in my estimation. I shall get home at a reasonable hour after all, although probably without luggage.
When we arrive in GLA, my name is called as we are waiting to disembark. The agent tells me to go straight to the baggage office, as my bag didn’t make it across Heathrow (which I expected). What I didn’t expect was that the lady in the baggage office had the property irregularity report complete and all I had to do was to describe my case, (a black 22) and I could leave. That, in my mind is excellent customer service, and all too rare.
The only footnote is that the next morning I was woken up at 7.25 by an insufferably cheery man from the courier service to say that he had my
bag and was about to leave the airport with it there and then. The BA courier service have done this to me before, and although it is good to know my bag is safe and sound, 7.25 on a non work day is for sleeping.
The rest of the week passes most pleasantly. We go out for dinner on my daughter’s birthday, I play some golf with her (and lose, as she is becoming a veritable golf monster, playing 5 or 6 times a week), and then on Sunday we have a family lunch with relatives coming from all over the country to celebrate her birthday. The highlight of the lunch is that my mother-in-law and one of our neighbours seem to be in competition to see who can drink the most wine. The neighbour normally enjoys a drink and can be found in the local pub every night, but he seems to have met his match in my mother-in-law, who complains loudly to me that I must have watered down her wine, because she has drunk several bottles and can still stand up!