Chaos at Heathrow

[Moindardt]

We arrived 2 1/2 hours ago from HKG to chaotic scenes. Most flights delayed. Many cancelled. We have been rebooked for tomorrow and currently waiting hotel vouchers. I would guess 3000 people in the lines awaiting rebooking. Fun times.

 

[blackcat20]

We arrived 2 1/2 hours ago from HKG to chaotic scenes. Most flights delayed. Many cancelled. We have been rebooked for tomorrow and currently waiting hotel vouchers. I would guess 3000 people in the lines awaiting rebooking. Fun times.

What is the reason for so many delays/cancellations?

 

[Cynicor]

Huh, really? T2 was fine a few hours ago, just got out on time I guess. Did storms move back in?

 

[Mal]

Huge storms overnight leading to flooding etc. Massive storms later this afternoon increasing flooding. (Heathrow unlikely to have flooded, but any heavy rain can restrict runway ops)

 

[Moindardt]

Also air traffic controllers strike in France so not allowed to fly over French air space. Premier Inn for the night +dinner +breakfast woohoo. Not.

Managed to change our Flexi booking in Oslo 10 minutes before the cutoff. Hopefully we can shuffle the flight until Saturday so we can do an extra night in London rather than Oslo.

People mentioned about compo. I have seen posts about it before but never looked to much. Is it something we should be looking at?

 

[RooFlyer]

<snip>

People mentioned about compo. I have seen posts about it before but never looked to much. Is it something we should be looking at?

Possibly not the best of references, but a start, FYI.

 

[Buzzard]

The joys of flying......
Every flight (4) I took last weekend was late, my flight from Hobart by about 3.5 hours.

 

[Austman]

Could this be the reason that QF2 was delayed over 2 hours? Scheduled departure was 21:30, actual 23:44.

I know a pax on the plane who is very upset that pax were forced to stay on board in near 30 degrees heat. Apparently the air conditioning was not working - or not working too well.

 

[theblank]

People mentioned about compo. I have seen posts about it before but never looked to much. Is it something we should be looking at?

Your travel insurance starts paying out for delays longer than 4hours.

 

[Moindardt]

Your travel insurance starts paying out for delays longer than 4hours.

Which one do you have and what do you claim? We have TID Full year Insurance but it says to ring them beforehand and we were getting almost no phone reception and the wifi was crashed and the mobile phone wifi was barely functioning.

 

[Julesmac]

Also air traffic controllers strike in France so not allowed to fly over French air space. Premier Inn for the night +dinner +breakfast woohoo. Not.
Those tricky Frogs. Probably a devious French ploy to encourage Brexit

 

[Comoman]

Also air traffic controllers strike in France so not allowed to fly over French air space. Premier Inn for the night +dinner +breakfast woohoo. Not.
Those tricky Frogs. Probably a devious French ploy to encourage Brexit

ATC seems to be always on strike in France. And it seems to have worked re: Brexit!

 

[Moindardt]

I am pretty pissed at Cathay Pacfic that they didn't say a single word about it. The first we knew about it was after we had done the interconnecting flights transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 (should have gone to the lounge first ).

All in all, I must say BA handled it pretty well. They are also in the middle of an upgrade for their reservation system so they had a triple whammy with the french strike and the storms. They handed out food and water bottles after about an hour and a half. The hotel we were at still had people coming in with vouchers when I went to bed at 10pm. The lady said they had taken out every hotel room in the area.

It took about 45 mins to get through to the BA number set up to handle all the problems. They had quite a number of options but they involved us either splitting up or class changes. In the couple of weeks beforehand, I had spoken to Cathay a few times about moving our flight to Oslo to Saturday so we could spend some time in London. Likewise, I tried to move our AA flight from Oslo on Sunday forward. Always my ideal flight had been the one landing at 8pm on Saturday to catch our 8am flight out on Sunday. As it turns out, that flight had open seats and the BA guy was more than happy to put us on it.

So now we are looking at what West End has showing tonight with decent seats and will book a hotel nearby