An Entire Country Frozen

I spent 48 hours stranded in London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 last Thursday. Hell on Earth. I witnessed about 3000 passengers fighting for luggage, another 3000 waiting for hotel coupons, leaving before the food riots started. All because of this.

This is Britain completely under the snow, from top to bottom. I was lucky: I got the last seat on flight BA177 on Thursday. It was the last flight that left to New York that day, after a six-hour delay (apparently, there’s only one defrosting machine in Heathrow). The previous day, they cancelled two of my flights. The next day, they cancelled all flights again. As I said, got lucky.

While the weather was bad, British Airways and the people at the airport were worse. In fact, they were the most incompetent, most idiotic people I’ve ever found anywhere in the planet, leaving all their customers unattended around 6pm and giving no information whatsoever, treating everyone like cattle. There was a point in which passengers had to step in and organise the baggage belts, because they were overflowing and jamming. At one other point, there were people fighting over food in the departures area. Sad.

When the guy at JFK’s customs asked me if I had anything to declare, I quoted Dennis Farina in Snatch from the very deep bottom of my heart and soul: “Don’t go to England.” And don’t ever fly British Airways. [NASA]