I always had a vastly superior experience with BA (in about 80 flights) than with any of the US carriers. Emirates was the only one to top it. The one exception was when I missed a connecting flight from LGW and they sent me to Newark on a Delta flight full of (12 year old) cheerleaders.
Newark.
She flew in from Stuttgart, then got stranded. I think it is a pretty good bet that her luggage has been unloaded. She said that the luggage area was scary (and she doesn’t scare easily.) I’m sure there is luggage stuck on planes - but remember nothing has come in now for days, so you’d think there would be time to get it off.
We made a reservation for her right away, and, as I said, she was among the first stranded. There are people sleeping in the lobby of the hotel. We’ve been proactive about booking rooms ever since I got to stay in a hotel at Denver, not Stapledon, thanks to the secretary of my old boss booking a room for me just in case.
They did get around to giving out forms to allow one to be compensated for hotel food and transportation expenses, 200 pounds a day, which is more than she is spending. She was also on the plane for 4.5 hours before it got canceled. (The flight attendants, after grousing by passengers, grudgingly handed out the loaded food about 3 hours in.) We’ve sent her the EU rules - she might get compensation for this also. I’m glad this finally got fixed in the US.
I think the tubes shut down on schedule. BAA is taking a lot of heat also for not having proper snow removal facilities, but I don’t have first hand information about that.
The snow has pretty much stopped - she went into a little town to buy clothes yesterday, but things are just beginning to free up. There are plenty of planes there, that’s for sure.
However we read a news story about Germany putting on lots of extra trains to relieve the problem for travelers going within Europe. One of the people she met had flown in from Scotland for a party; he’d be able to get out by train if they had added some (haven’t heard anything about this happening) which would at least make life easier for those going to the US etc.
That explains why the workers had no trouble leaving at midnight, right? And the tube was not shut down due to weather. Plus, the weather has recovered a lot faster than BA.
I’ve been in really bad snowstorms, where it falls faster than you can plow. This isn’t one of them. Short term disruption, fine, but not four days later.
This just in:
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, appeared frustrated that the winter weather could completely snarl air travel through Heathrow, where only a “handful” of flights were landing and taking off on Monday, according to a spokeswoman. “It can’t be beyond the wit of man surely to find the shovels, the diggers, the snowplows or whatever it takes to clear the snow out from under the planes, to get the planes moving and to have more than one runway going,” Mr. Johnson said, according to The Associated Press.
That’s BAA, of course. My pitting of BA is not exclusive.
Most of the Tube lines don’t run 24 hours a day, and in any event most LHR workers can’t afford to live in London proper, so they’d be taking normal trains home.
ETA: Boris Johnson is a fucking idiot and he’s welcome to go and pick up a shovel himself if he likes.
Sorry about your troubles, Voyager.
Can you just take snowploughs from the road network (the only other possible source, and they’ll be busy enough anyway) and apply them to airport runways? I thought that runways were ridged surfaces, and normal ploughs would damage them?
I cheerfully concede folks here have had good experiences with BA. It’s just not mine nor anyone else I know IRL’s experience.
I wonder how they manage that, those lucky bastards.
Not my troubles. I’m sitting here in sunny (well, rainy) California. 
I don’t know if normal plows would work. I also don’t know where Gatwick came up with 47 plows.
The point is,
LHR is a mess and a hell hole for the travellers in the best of circumstances. And BA doesn’t help the cause either.
SIN is a fairly large airport with a very smooth experience for the travellers. If SIN has to be closed for few days for some reason, there are couple options available for all the passengers:
One of my colleagues who travelled from Sydney to Stockholm recently missed a connecting flight from Hong Kong and arrived around midnight to LHR. The connecting flight to Stockholm was to be departing around 6 am following morning. Since passengers are not allowed to stay in the terminal 5 overnight, he had to check out the luggage and find a hotel outside of LHR for 3 hours. Did I mention that he had a surf board as a present for a friend in Sweden? Luckily he is a UK citizen.
Chewing gum? Somebody farted?
Followup: My coworker’s husband finally made it home through Amsterdam, three days later than scheduled.
For starters, you can hardly blame BAA or BA for UK visa rules. We don’t have a visa on arrival scheme. Sorry about that, but frankly many countries don’t.
Secondly, I honestly couldn’t tell you what hours terminal 5 is open, but why didn’t your friend just take the free train to terminal 3, which is open 24 hours?
Probably because no one told him he could – and I expect he would have still had to collect his luggage anyway.
I avoid LHR like the plague, it’s just not worth the hassle, and partially some of that is BAs fault since Terminal 5 is their baby as I understand it. Although you can’t pin the visa stuff on them.
Also, just to agree with Una Persson, this thread is the first time I’ve heard anything good about BA. I refuse to fly with them and so do most people I know.
I’m interested it what people find wrong with KLM, they’re cheap and you get what you pay for but their customer service (particularly in Amsterdam) is excellent. There’s always people there, when I’ve had to phone to change flights (due to the volcano) it was a snap, when I missed my connection in AMS I got a nice hotel and a free meal. Sure, their cabin staff are the surliest I’ve met outside RyanAir but …
I’m flying KLM in two days, watch this turn into the trip from hell because I tempted fate.
Back to the OP, sorry about all the hassles, personally I think these things can be handled better. Or even just ‘appear’ to be handled better but not letting your staff sit-up front and gab while their are huge lines. They don’t need to work, just not be obviously sitting around, should just be common sense …
And I don’t get why everyone is defending BA like someone attacked their favourite
auntie. Is that just a nobodies-right-in-the-pit thing or have I missed some British / American fandango lately?
SD
I don’t think people are defending BA too vigorously. Those who fly regularly know it is not the worst, nor it is the best. (don’t mention delays, Cairo and lost luggage to me unless you want strangling with a pair of free flight socks)
They don’t suck the most, they don’t suck the least, they have moderate suckage with periods of non-suckage. However, I agree with someone else who said that for the prices they charge we should expect far less suckage than we get.
And Heathrow is a mess simply because it grew organically during the post-war flight boom. It did so within a restricted space and without sufficient foresight. That’s why we see the nightmare of transfers and accessibility now.
Any slight hiccup merely compounds it. (such as this week’s weather)
The common theme with the world’s better airports (Hong Kong, Changi, Munich etc) is that they are built from scratch with a clearer view on what is required for a better passenger experience. Heathrow is trying to play catch-up and that won’t be completed for another decade at least.
And on that cheery note…
Fair enough…After being confined to a tiny space for 27+ hours each way, its very hard to distingusih between the different parties to lay the blame on…They all looks like one giant organization to ruin my journey… 
One of my business partners was supposed to fly in Saturday but now is supposed to be coming today. As of yesterday he had booked his seat and they said if site allowed him to book the seat he should show up and expect to fly. We’ll see.
You’ll be delighted to know that UK news agencies are reporting that Heathrow cut snow defence funding this year by two-thirds.
My daughter’s flight to SFO actually took off - and only nine minutes late. The other one got canceled. They appear to be letting long haul flights out before short ones.
The Register today reports that they are forbidding pictures inside the terminal - though the press office denies it. However my daughter heard a BA person threaten someone taking a picture with arrest. It might be a low level policy - or it might not.
From this morning. ahhhhahahaha
they’ll have that place up and running in no time.
snort