It's March 13th and the fog is pretty bad driving to the airport. Bee deposits me at Terminal 3 and I make my way to departures to print out my boarding card at the self service stand. It's about 7.15am so I have plenty of time to get through security and browse duty free before boarding at 8.20am, flight is due to leave at 8.50am and I'll be in sunny Southampton by 10.
I get through security without a hitch, make my way through to the lounge and check the boards, everything looks fine, no gate yet but it's early. I woke with a bit of a cold so I head to the chemist to pick up some travel tissues, emerge and instantly notice, the colour red, drawing my fuzzy vision to the boards. I have to get closer to read but it's already registered with me that the red is for "cancelled", 8 flights are cancelled and there must be four or five hundred people milling around the lounge, all making a bee-line for the two women behind the desk. I join the queue but instantly, three other queues form and I stand there for 20 minutes not moving an inch.
Eventually, a lone airline employee arrives to hand out flyers on refund policy, how the airline is not responsible for the weather and something about travel insurance. She is defensive, and I don't blame her, she's probably bracing herself to be verbally set upon by irate travellers. To be fair, I didn't hear anyone with a lost temper or a raised voice, but she wasn't that helpful.
There was no information... other than the flyer, no announcements and no-one to tell you what to do next. The flyer woman finally arrives at me and she's fielding questions as she distributes in a bit of a drive-by fashion so I ask her a question which makes her stop in her tracks.
"I'm sorry to trouble you but you need to tell me where to go next and what to do, I've never been booked on a cancelled flight before." Woman does actually stop, I need to make my way out of the airport, head back to departures and the airline desk... there may be a massive queue, and the airline will "try" to get me on a later flight, it depends if they have the capacity. I and everyone around me listens intently, at least I wasn't the only one who didn't know what to do.
Not sounding hugely promising. Woman directs us, (me and the surrounding fellow passengers,) to the way out. I'm now in a queue with a couple of hundred people. We wait, patiently for 15 minutes before the queue starts to move. As we get closer, the shorter lady to my right asks if I can see what's happening, why is it such a slow moving queue? As we get closer, I can see staff checking boarding cards, they must be doing some kind of security check to let us out. As we get closer, we realise that we are in the totally wrong queue, we are in a queue to board for a flight to Heathrow which is somehow going ahead.
We'd wasted quite a bit of time queueing in the wrong place and now I'm thinking if I ever get to the airline desk, any available seats may be gone. We ask someone else the way to the exit, our boarding passes are checked, we're let through and we follow the exit signs, finally coming through the doors into the arrivals area like we've just got off a flight. The irony isn't lost on me and it manages to stir a slight smile from my lips.
I make my way back to departures and after a small wait, manage to get on the 3.25pm flight... if the fog lifts...
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