Theoretically speaking, if you were stuck at Heathrow...
 

After a long day of going almost nowhere, sitting at Carluccios for dinner, my daughter has an interesting question: if we were in the lounge and our flight got canceled and the next one was only the next day (the actual situation almost), would we be forced to leave the lounge and/or the airport? You often see people sleeping in airports but I can't imagine they let you do that at Heathrow.

I wouldn't stay at the airport. I'd take the offer of a free hotel room. You could stay put but it would be uncomfortable and unpleasant.

After you get asked to leave the rarified air of the lounge, and have to slum it with the norms, you'll soon wish you took BA up on the hotel :D

Thanks, folks. It was theoretical. We are heading to Gatwick and it was not BAs fault. My daughter was just curious.

She did make a good point though: the lounges can't possibly stay open all night in these circumstances because all the alcahol would be gone in the morning. That's my girl :cool:

It depends a bit on which lounge and where the Abjua/Tel Aviv / Moscow flights depart from, but usually the lounges close from 22:00 hrs. Sometime T5B will stay open a little later particularly if there are delays, but otherwise you will be turfed out around 21:45 hrs. There is security scan of all 3 buildings after the departure of the last flight, and every so often someone will need some guidance about what to do next - there can be language difficulties involved if someone was on a cancelled service. Only a deliberately uncomfortable section of landside Arrivals is kept open 24 hours a day.

Though there are plenty of lounges which do stay open 24 hours a day, there aren't any in London, and I can't think of one in the UK either.

I had almost this situation a few years ago. Sitting in the lounge in T3, we got frequent reports of delay and more delay to our flight to SIN. The aircraft had gone tech, but the engineers were confident that they could solve the problem that night. The population of the lounge gradually thinned out as other flights departed, until we were the only ones left. We were eventually ushered into the Flounge so that the Club lounge could close, and drank there until it was too late to leave even if the plane could be fixed. We were then taken to a hotel (I think a better class establishment than provided for those who had not been in the lounge) and told to come back after breakfast.

This contrasts with a winter night a few years earlier when snow closed the airport between my arriving in T4 and reaching T1 for a connecting flight to GLA (or possibly EDI). There were no hotel rooms that could be reached because of the driving conditions, so I spent an uncomfortable night in the checkin barn in T1,

FYI : https://www.sleepinginairports.net/g...port-guide.htm
May you never need this information

don't even have to be flying F

Plaza Premium in HKG, SIN, Rome are open 24/7

unfortunately, the Plaza Premium in LHR T2 is only open 0500 to ~2200

Tried sleeping overnight in an airport just once

it was the vacuum cleaners that kept me awake

I stayed the night in STN on the floor. Turns out it was the night before Middleborough vs Sevilla in the UEFA cup final. Ended up translating and drinking all night. Finally boarded a Ryanair flight at 7am to Pisa. I was butchered haha.

Not entirely relevant..
 

Couple years back 747 went tech during Wimbledon early evening...spent night on Sofitel ballroom floor on yoga mats and sleeping bags with my family and another 200 persons...also were fed...not the best but accetable given no rooms available