I'm Baaack - and More Heathrow Woes

[jacey]

Just like it says on the tin, I'm back from Ottawa, I've had a couple of hours sleep, a cup of coffee. a piece of my mum's Bakewell Tart (that she made for BB), I've made a lamb stew and I've managed to post the email that had been piling up while I was away, since, even though I had an excellent WiFi connection in my hotel room in Ottawa, for some reason I could collect mail but not send it. I suspect this is something weird going on with Demon, my ISP for thirteen years, now, and pretty good most of the time, but terrible for international travel.

So... more Heathrow Woes?

Well, yes, but not as bad as on the way out, however I have to say that their system for looking after folks who don't walk so fast, or walk so well is UTTER CRAP. (There are moving walkways, but only on the final strip between gates, not in the rest of the terminal building.) I've never explored this before. I've always just gritted my teeth and hiked, but I've usually had BB to give me a hand with hand-baggage if necessary. I didn't really need assistance this time. I mean, I can walk so it's a borderline thing, but I do have a bad knee (courtesy of a torn ligament some years ago) and a lot of fast (for me) walking tends to aggravate it and I suffer for it for days afterwards. Plus I still have the remains of the underfoot blisters acquired on the outbound journey. So with the time factor added in as well, I thought I'd see what could be done to make my transit through Heathrow a more pleasant and less stressful experience. I only had a two hour turnaround for making my connection, which sounds a lot, but it took every minute of two and a half hours to make my connection outbound with a combination of walking time and queuing time,

So I asked on check-in at Ottawa (delightfully small and easy airport) and was told that they'd arrange a passenger cart to collect me at the landing gate at Heathrow Terminal Three. This happened and it was fine. It saved the long hike from the gate to the transfer bus that was to take me to Terminal One... however... the cart could get no closer than the top of the escalator leading down to the T3 bus station.

Now I can walk so walking down the escalator, wheeling my heavy laptop/briefcase and waiting for the bus wasn't a problem. I never expected the cart to take me door to door, BUT, having requested special assistance I was abandoned completely at that point. They never bothered to ascertain why I needed assistance, so as far as they were concerned I could have been someone with a heart problem or any number of muscular-skeletal conditions.

So I was fine, but out of cussedness and curiosity I decided to follow through and see what else was available for the walking wounded on my transit. As it turns out the answer was: nothing. When I got off the bus at T1 and enquired at the special assistance desk I was told that there were no passenger carts at this terminal. Simply none. Had I been desperately ill, immobile or willing to sit in a wheelchair regardless - which is complete overkill and totally unnecessary for someone with a bad knee and temporary blisters - I could have requested special assistance, but otherwise... Nothing.

Admittedly I was fine. Having saved the longish walk at T3 and also gained some time on the first leg of the transfer, I was still plenty fit enough to manage the longish walk at T1 (no moving walkways in this part of the airport). Also the queues for immigration and for security were much shorter than on the outbound journey (hardly any wait at all as opposed to standing in line for half an hour) so I had plenty of time to amble slowly to the gate.

However there are a lot of people out there who are not wheelchair cases and who would be horrified to be offered a wheelchair, but whose walking speed and comfort zone is not up to transiting Heathrow at the velocity required to make their connections in a pain-free, stress-free manner. Other huge airports have much better transit systems. Newark, New Jersey, has a brilliant little monorail system to transfer passengers between the three terminals, the bus stop and the car rental hubs. Admittedly it's busy, but it's easy to get at and it's regular so that people move through the system quickly and relatively stress free.

So marks out of ten for Heathrow: Outbound 1/10 (and that's being generous because I did actually catch my flight) and inbound 4/10. Come on, Heathrow. I challenge you to make it easy for people, they are, after all, your customers. You're the biggest airport in the world, so figure out how to move people effectively without exhausting them, stressing them out and delivering them to their holiday or business destination tired and sore.

Comments

[slrose.livejournal.com]

It might have been the hotel network not letting smtp stuff through.

I sometimes have problems sending email from hotel networks; if the smtp doesn't work, my shell account usually does, but there have been a couple of times I've had to resort to webmail to send outgoing email.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yes, that sounds logical. It definitely bounced back so qyuckly that it had to be my end that was the problem. I ended up setting up a gmail account just to send out some urgent stuff, but most of it wasn't time sensitive to within a few days.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Welcome home!
Heathrow is dreadful - my Mum was unwell once outbound to Sydney from Heathrow.She's in her seventies and usually pretty fit, but this time I arranged a wheelchair for her which dumped her well before she got to her gate so she had to walk miles too.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It's appalling. And it's possibly even more difficult when you're one of those borderline cases ot have some temporary ailment or inconvenience because a) you're mortally embarrassed to be offered a wheelchair and b) you're not used to the assistance system. Anyone who has a permanent disability probably knows all the hints and wrinkles for getting help where and when they need it in places like that and has a legitimate reason to shout if they don't receive it.

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

figure out how to move people effectively without exhausting them, stressing them out and delivering them to their holiday or business destination tired and sore.

Give them sleeping pills, pack them all in wooden boxes and ship them as air freight?

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Now that has a lot to recommend it as long as you could trust them to make sure that a) the boxes were comfortably padded, warm, supplied with fresh air and safe and that b) kept right side up and c) they didn't lose you in transit. I wouldn't mind being packed in a box, picked up at my door and shipped overnight to my destination, arriving relaxed and refreshed having had a good night's sleep.

Of course waking to find yourself in lost property in Timbuctu would be a little disconcerting.

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

Hee. Sounds like the beginning of a short story ;-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That is really poor. They are not trying.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

No, not trying at all. They're treating people like cattle. Of course, that's not a new revelation, but you'd think it would get better rather than worse as customer expectations rise.