On the first day of my Christmas holidays…..

Posted by admin on 23/12/2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

On the first day of my Christmas holidays (23rd December) I ran around like a demented outcast form Harry Potters’ weird yet wonderful film. Post office…. shops…. tidying house….. packing…. keys to friends…. then to airport; then the TRUE fun began. Our plan is to fly to Paris circumnavigate the Paris Peripherique (the M25 of Paris) and then drive to Limopges, as Ryanair’s fares would have taken me to Australia any other time of year, and these were booked in September!

As they say There’s Nothing Easy about Easjet is so true. We got to the airport, by the skin of our teeth; First Capital Connect decided it would slow down all the trains; for whatever reason no one knows. There was no snow on the tracks, a bit of rain and it was cold. Maybe the wrong temperature or wrong type of cold?  Anyway we finally got to the airport while tracking my flight to Paris on my trusty iPhone. That god for today’s technology. Many argue it it is the ruination of society, it can be, but it has its purpose.  I was also relieved to know that out flight was delayed by 90 mins. As we had checked in online all we had to do was negiotate security. A fete in itself!

We go to security to only find them to TELL US out flight was cancelled, yet the departure boards was showingdeparture scheduled in 75 minutes. A true British event then commenced, a orderly queue! Oh yes in a crisis the British do one of two things, either form a queue, or make a cup of tea. In this case the former with mutterings in various languages started; eventually, after 10 minutes a new queue was required. (Probably not the right type of queue in front of Easyjet’s customer services desk, bad publicity etc – have they not heard of Twitter?). We waited as is obligatory in a British queue were then presented with two options. There are only ever two options at an airport:

• Accept a refund
• Or accept the flight the next day some 18 hours later than planned.

They has convienently forgot to remind us that we have three other entitlements when one has a cancelled flight;

• a meal
• overnight accomodation
• 2 phone calls/faxes/telexes to anywhere.

However we did eventuallyremind them of uor entitlements as we were 3rd in the queue we made sure everyone heard what the EU requirement states. That said, this was the 4th day that they had this problem and I am sure all the staff ( and it was obvious the airport staff had had enough) were now tired of handly disgruntled passengers whose flights were now affected by the adverse weather. except this was not adverse wether, this was a crewing problem so entirely within the control of Easyjet.

We went and had some food, and eventually found that we had a room in the local Holiday Inn Express in Luton airport. A 5 minutes walk away on a normal day; however this was not a normal day. The path all the way to the airport was not cleared. This is now 4 days into a snowy spell and there had been no snow for 2 days. So people struggled with luggage and bags. Even our well travelled sturdy cabin sized bags were deciding to do a Thornville and Dean 9.0 scored show on the way between the airport and the Holiday Inn. Added advantage of walking, sorry, read skidding in the rain which was like a downpour. So we ended up on our first night of our Christmas holidays in a hotel.

However, the kindness of the staff and helpfulness was overwhelming… people seemed to came together to help each other, and there was a joyful feeling as people put into a situation they couldn’t change but were safe, warm and looked after.  So to bed and await tomorrow’s dramas.