I stayed in the LGW Hilton Wednesday night, and heard about the news, much ard about the news, much to my delight, on waking up at 8pm on Thursday morning.
Getting into the terminal was a nightmare. The queues for check in started outside at the car drop off point. Not a good start!
It took about 1.5 hours to get to the Continental BusinessFirst checkin, which once there was thankfully quiet and spacious (the check is in a separate room to the a separate room to the economy check in).
The checkin lady gave me a fast track sticker, but wisely pointed out that it might not be much good today! which indeed it was not (fast track was closed).
On leaving another lady made sure everyone knew where the Presidents club was - top marks to Continental - they did a good job under the circumstaces.
LGW staff did a good job as well, with lots of people in yellow 'can i help?' shirts giving info, and advising that essentially no hand luggage is allowed today. (hence no pictures for the whoe of this TR!)
Security was relatively swift considering the issues - all desks appeared open (with no fasttrack of couse) and it was a full belt off, shoes off, and all pocket contents through the scanner.
Every passenger was also patted down after the x-ray machine thingy - irrespective of whether you set it off or not.
A quick purchase on some US dollars, and I was off to the Presidents club, which would be my hime for the afternoon!
The club is very average, but had sky news on so everyone was ket up to date. A few jack daniels helped too.
I was flying on the CO5 to Houston (777), which was due to leave at midday and got to the lounge at about 11 am.
The staff were all helpful, however they did of course not know much about when the flights were going to leave - but they did their best to keep us informed and did not seem to get overly pestered by passengers. So it was a nice atmosphere in the lounge which was good to see.
At about 1pm the 10:30 am flight (777) to Newark tried to take off, aborted, and then taxied to a spot next to the runway and waited - which was not a good sign.
at 2pm our flight was called for boarding - so made our way to the plane and settled in - where we could see the Newark flight still sitting by the runway - a full 2 hours later.
(spelling corrected 13/9/06)
