The Gatwick Drone Debacle: Part 2

Welcome back gentle reader! I did decide to continue this story over onto Friday, just to make sure there was some continuity. So first a little recap of what happened last time …

I got to Gatwick early, had a magnificent breakfast, and watched as the staff of Gatwick had a meltdown over a drone that they couldn’t manage to find. After several hours of delays the flights were then cancelled, and the airlines were plunged into the Herculean task of having to deal with all of those angry customers.

Air Transat customers were told to place wait in the line at the check ins, so I plunked myself down in what would turn out to be a rather advantageous spot …

I got to know the people around me; a couple of Canadians, and English woman, and later an Aussie who were all supposed to be on my flight. We talked about where we were from, what sort of jobs we were doing, and eventually played a word game to pass the time. Every once in a while the manager of the Air Transat check ins would come over and give those in line an update on the situation. Eventually we were told the plan: Birmingham.

I have to pause here to say that Air Transat did take good care of us, so kudos to them. A lot of other airlines just put their hands up and decided not to help their customers at all.

We were told that everyone who was scheduled to fly to Toronto would be bused to Birmingham, and flown out from there. The instructions were that if we had already checked our luggage, one person from each party could go past a special security gate, down to the basement luggage carousel, grab their things, and bring them back upstairs where we would wait for the bus. The issue was that we had to leave our other bag outside of the secure area.

I’m sure the solo travelers reading this are already seeing the problem here. If you’re alone, who do you leave your bags with? The staff, I guess? I imagine others who weren’t part of our little group were forced to leave their carry-ons and purses with them or even unattended to go get their luggage. Two of our group were faced with the same situation. One was also a Canadian solo traveler like me, the other had a girlfriend but she’d left to purchase them some lunch, leaving her belongings with him. Had we all been alone, we might have been in a bit of a pickle; but we weren’t.

The solo Canadian offered up a suggestion. Why not leave our things with the boyfriend, and if he gave us a description of his luggage, we would get it and bring it up for him. Not only did we agree, but that was when the Aussie joined our little group, asking if we could get his luggage too, as he was in a similar situation as the Canadian boyfriend.

The solo Canadian and I went down to get everyone’s luggage, brought it back up, and once the respective girlfriends were found we all headed towards the bus together. When we got there we were told that Birmingham was two and a half hours away without traffic, so naturally we once again trusted each other with our luggage, and made sure everyone had a chance to use the washroom before the bus left. We even made sure that the bus waited so that no one was left behind. Like in the line, on the bus we shared a bit of food and battery power for charging phones.

Night was falling by the time we got to Birmingham, which is a slight shame because I was looking forward to seeing a little bit of the Peaky Blinders’ hometown, but I figured when I came back maybe I might be able to come back for a weekend.

The group we had formed stayed together in line but didn’t talk much. I think we were all tried, but I think more than that we were a bit miffed. There were twelve or more counters left unopenned to check luggage, but only two were in use, and one was being reserved for priority passengers, of which there were perhaps three. There were also two airline workers talking with each other near one of the check-ins. I think everyone in the group had a collective eye-roll when we saw what had been laid out before us, but we stayed quiet. We were all too tired to fight. The solo Canadian and I stuck together, we chatted together, got dinner together, and panicked together when it was announced that our flight was delayed by an hour, but by about 10 that evening we were finally boarding a flight for Toronto.

I don’t usually sleep well on planes, but after fifteen hours of being awake and mildly stressed I was ready for a nap. Alas, it was not to be, not on this plane, not on this flight.

To be continued …