WARNING: Flying into UK Weds 30th Nov? Change your arrangements...
Nov 28th, 2011, 05:02 AM
#22
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Ronald Reagan endangered the public at least during his first term, and did not get fired.
Would be unfair to fire the public service workers for just one day of chaos. And as long as they don't have the capacity to start WW III, I consider their actions more an inconvenience.
Yet, it would have been cool if they were to inconvinience other people on any other day than on that of my planned trip.
Would be unfair to fire the public service workers for just one day of chaos. And as long as they don't have the capacity to start WW III, I consider their actions more an inconvenience.
Yet, it would have been cool if they were to inconvinience other people on any other day than on that of my planned trip.
Nov 28th, 2011, 07:40 AM
#23
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<i>
Cowboy1968 on Nov 28, 11 at 9:02am
Ronald Reagan endangered the public at least during his first term, and did not get fired.
Yet, it would have been cool if they were to inconvinience other people on any other day than on that of my planned trip.</i>
What did RR do to endanger the public?
I look forward to your TR. It was reported that some planes will be on the tarmac for 12 hours.
Cowboy1968 on Nov 28, 11 at 9:02am
Ronald Reagan endangered the public at least during his first term, and did not get fired.
Yet, it would have been cool if they were to inconvinience other people on any other day than on that of my planned trip.</i>
What did RR do to endanger the public?
I look forward to your TR. It was reported that some planes will be on the tarmac for 12 hours.
Nov 28th, 2011, 11:26 AM
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spaarne.. I won't write a TR because I won't go. It's no use to add one more person to the chaos if it's not necessary. Things like that just happen once in a while. Unlike other people that day, I don't have to travel at all costs, so I just refrain from trying.
But if you insist, I can do a virtual TR:
Take 11am flight from Berlin-Tegel airport to London-Heathrow.
Tegel is a little sh*tty airport squeezed into the city during times when there was nothing but the Soviet Union around Berlin.
Next year, Berlin gets a grand brand new airport half way in Poland and as close to the city as Edinburgh-Stansted or Brighton-Gatwick airports.
Flight is okay, airplane is equipped with wings and engines. Food was good because I brought something with me, FA renders only average services in the lavatory, and coke had only one ice cube in it. Write protest letter to BA chairman and Queen of England.
Arrive around 12 noon at LHR and pilot finds as usual the most far away parking position. People speak Welsh when we disembark.
Walk 10 miles and set my watch back 1 hour and 15 years to the time when people had to flash passports at borders.
Stuck in the Slow Lane at passport control I watch people with machine-readable EU passports (which I forgot to pack, again) in the "Fast Lane" in a funny device that looks like a body scanner or teleporter and is supposed to read the passport's chip and scan the features of the face. As usual, it does not work, and Fast Lane people get behind in line of the Slow Lane people. Regardless of the constant failure of the teleporter, one "I wear a uniform so I am important" staff keeps calling for people with chipped passports to try out the machine. Is it just me or is it really a worldwide phenomenon that "uniformed staff" (i.e. those who ain't really cops or immigration or customs officers) always looks and acts as if they just got kicked out of high school at age 25 and could not tell the difference between the X chromosome and the X factor?
Passport control is a breeze as Mr Immigration Officer can't do one darn thing from letting me into the country. I could cite the relevant article of the EU treaty, but I'm too lazy.
It's obvious that Britain will never join the Schengen zone as that would mean one opportunity less to queue. It's not a matter of souvereignty (I won't even bother to do a spell check), it's the queueing (again, spell it properly yourself if you invent such weird words).
Walk another 10 miles to Underground.
Just out of curiosity, who designed this airport? Bozo, the clown, Hannibal Lector, the Marquis de Sade? I mean, there are few countries in the world so much at the cutting edge of interior decorating and "Grand Designs" as Britain and still most of Heathrow looks as if a tornado had hit a bunch of cattle barns in Uzbekistan and the result was used as one of the planet's biggest airports.
Enough whining.
Wait 10 minutes in line to get a paper day pass from the machine as my company does not re-imburse me for that darn Oyster thing. If Orwell was still alive, he would not have let that Oyster thing happen. That or CCTV. Read your classics, pudding-eaters.
As Britain has not introduced real money yet, people pay everything with plastic cards. Instead of money, souvenir bills with the picture of the reigning monarch can be obtained from a so called "Bureau de Change" (which probably means that French still is the official language in this country since 1066).
Take Piccadilly line into town. It's an Underground that goes overground most of the time. How cheap those Brits can be.
I change at Earl's Court for a District line train to High Street Kensington.
Walk out of tube station and have a Happy Meal at McD.
By the way, while the Picadilly line is a tube, the District line isn't. Tube lines are those tiny trains made for 19th century Londoners which must have been as tall as hobbits and squeeze normal people to death.
By the way, is there a reason why the "tube" station at Kensington High Street is named High Street Kensington and not Kensington High Street? Some early "cut and paste" error or too much ale?
Sleep through conference.
Leave conference, have another Happy Meal and take District line to Tower Hill or whatever that station is called, and change to DLR for Lucy (which, just to add a bit of unwanted trivia, is airline lingo for London City airport sporting the IATA code LCY).
LCY is a great airport as there are no lines at security. You can hardly believe that you're in London. There is not much behind security, unfortunately, as LCY had been supposed to cater for BIPs (busy important people) from the Docklands who arrive 8.5 minutes prior to departure because they are busy to wreck some 3rd world country like Nigeria or Greece by betting on its default.
Nevertheless, I spend some of those funny souvenir bills on tacky souvenir items as Christmas presents for people I don't like. Or for those who think that Ronny Raygun was a cool guy.
Well, maybe he was a cool guy, though I liked his movies better than his politics. And that he sent cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes to his buddies as Christmas presents (which ole ads say). But, I guess, you gotta have to live 5 miles from a silo with nuclear missiles which put you on every commies' wish list for armageddon (which, by the way, generates 47.6 million hits on Google, which says quite a bit about our desire to be the chosen people who gets to watch Earth been blown to bits) to understand that. Which, by the way, makes me wonder why we call the Middle Ages the "dark age" when at least those ole kings and dukes and princes had the guts to lead their warriors into the fight and did not prepare to hide in shelters near Moscow and DC. Go ahead, push that button but we will tie you guys and your families to a pole on the Red Square and in front of the White House (and elsewhere, not to be too discriminating) so you'll be first to hear the missiles coming and get toasted.
Whatever -- LCY is more fun to land at than to depart from as it is one of the few airports in the world where you approach at twice the usual approach angle so the underprivileged East Londoners don't get too much noise. Well, the true reason is, of course, that when you approach from the West you go right over Buckingham Palace. Since the usual glide slope would cause too much excitement in the important parts of town, you get to throw up your sandwich as the plane stays up high above Westminster and the City before it dives down into the Docklands.
A nice side effect is that first-timers think that the plane is being taken over by al-Quaida and is going for a crash into the river Thames or the ExCel convention centre.
As said, departing from LCY is only half the fun and appr. 90 minutes later I'd land safely at Munich airport.
P.S. Yes, I had way too much spare time and beer available this evening.
But if you insist, I can do a virtual TR:
Take 11am flight from Berlin-Tegel airport to London-Heathrow.
Tegel is a little sh*tty airport squeezed into the city during times when there was nothing but the Soviet Union around Berlin.
Next year, Berlin gets a grand brand new airport half way in Poland and as close to the city as Edinburgh-Stansted or Brighton-Gatwick airports.
Flight is okay, airplane is equipped with wings and engines. Food was good because I brought something with me, FA renders only average services in the lavatory, and coke had only one ice cube in it. Write protest letter to BA chairman and Queen of England.
Arrive around 12 noon at LHR and pilot finds as usual the most far away parking position. People speak Welsh when we disembark.
Walk 10 miles and set my watch back 1 hour and 15 years to the time when people had to flash passports at borders.
Stuck in the Slow Lane at passport control I watch people with machine-readable EU passports (which I forgot to pack, again) in the "Fast Lane" in a funny device that looks like a body scanner or teleporter and is supposed to read the passport's chip and scan the features of the face. As usual, it does not work, and Fast Lane people get behind in line of the Slow Lane people. Regardless of the constant failure of the teleporter, one "I wear a uniform so I am important" staff keeps calling for people with chipped passports to try out the machine. Is it just me or is it really a worldwide phenomenon that "uniformed staff" (i.e. those who ain't really cops or immigration or customs officers) always looks and acts as if they just got kicked out of high school at age 25 and could not tell the difference between the X chromosome and the X factor?
Passport control is a breeze as Mr Immigration Officer can't do one darn thing from letting me into the country. I could cite the relevant article of the EU treaty, but I'm too lazy.
It's obvious that Britain will never join the Schengen zone as that would mean one opportunity less to queue. It's not a matter of souvereignty (I won't even bother to do a spell check), it's the queueing (again, spell it properly yourself if you invent such weird words).
Walk another 10 miles to Underground.
Just out of curiosity, who designed this airport? Bozo, the clown, Hannibal Lector, the Marquis de Sade? I mean, there are few countries in the world so much at the cutting edge of interior decorating and "Grand Designs" as Britain and still most of Heathrow looks as if a tornado had hit a bunch of cattle barns in Uzbekistan and the result was used as one of the planet's biggest airports.
Enough whining.
Wait 10 minutes in line to get a paper day pass from the machine as my company does not re-imburse me for that darn Oyster thing. If Orwell was still alive, he would not have let that Oyster thing happen. That or CCTV. Read your classics, pudding-eaters.
As Britain has not introduced real money yet, people pay everything with plastic cards. Instead of money, souvenir bills with the picture of the reigning monarch can be obtained from a so called "Bureau de Change" (which probably means that French still is the official language in this country since 1066).
Take Piccadilly line into town. It's an Underground that goes overground most of the time. How cheap those Brits can be.
I change at Earl's Court for a District line train to High Street Kensington.
Walk out of tube station and have a Happy Meal at McD.
By the way, while the Picadilly line is a tube, the District line isn't. Tube lines are those tiny trains made for 19th century Londoners which must have been as tall as hobbits and squeeze normal people to death.
By the way, is there a reason why the "tube" station at Kensington High Street is named High Street Kensington and not Kensington High Street? Some early "cut and paste" error or too much ale?
Sleep through conference.
Leave conference, have another Happy Meal and take District line to Tower Hill or whatever that station is called, and change to DLR for Lucy (which, just to add a bit of unwanted trivia, is airline lingo for London City airport sporting the IATA code LCY).
LCY is a great airport as there are no lines at security. You can hardly believe that you're in London. There is not much behind security, unfortunately, as LCY had been supposed to cater for BIPs (busy important people) from the Docklands who arrive 8.5 minutes prior to departure because they are busy to wreck some 3rd world country like Nigeria or Greece by betting on its default.
Nevertheless, I spend some of those funny souvenir bills on tacky souvenir items as Christmas presents for people I don't like. Or for those who think that Ronny Raygun was a cool guy.
Well, maybe he was a cool guy, though I liked his movies better than his politics. And that he sent cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes to his buddies as Christmas presents (which ole ads say). But, I guess, you gotta have to live 5 miles from a silo with nuclear missiles which put you on every commies' wish list for armageddon (which, by the way, generates 47.6 million hits on Google, which says quite a bit about our desire to be the chosen people who gets to watch Earth been blown to bits) to understand that. Which, by the way, makes me wonder why we call the Middle Ages the "dark age" when at least those ole kings and dukes and princes had the guts to lead their warriors into the fight and did not prepare to hide in shelters near Moscow and DC. Go ahead, push that button but we will tie you guys and your families to a pole on the Red Square and in front of the White House (and elsewhere, not to be too discriminating) so you'll be first to hear the missiles coming and get toasted.
Whatever -- LCY is more fun to land at than to depart from as it is one of the few airports in the world where you approach at twice the usual approach angle so the underprivileged East Londoners don't get too much noise. Well, the true reason is, of course, that when you approach from the West you go right over Buckingham Palace. Since the usual glide slope would cause too much excitement in the important parts of town, you get to throw up your sandwich as the plane stays up high above Westminster and the City before it dives down into the Docklands.
A nice side effect is that first-timers think that the plane is being taken over by al-Quaida and is going for a crash into the river Thames or the ExCel convention centre.
As said, departing from LCY is only half the fun and appr. 90 minutes later I'd land safely at Munich airport.
P.S. Yes, I had way too much spare time and beer available this evening.
Nov 28th, 2011, 01:54 PM
#28
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RM67.. Thank you so much, but while you are apalled by my eating habits I am appalled by your spelling habits.
But, I must admit that you are correct. After one year of super-sizing myself (or is that supre-sising in BE?) I finally get credited twice the frequent flyer miles with BA. Which may explain why I can afford so many trips to London.
bilbo... Unfortunately you are more correct than you can imagine.
But, I must admit that you are correct. After one year of super-sizing myself (or is that supre-sising in BE?) I finally get credited twice the frequent flyer miles with BA. Which may explain why I can afford so many trips to London.
bilbo... Unfortunately you are more correct than you can imagine.
Nov 30th, 2011, 12:17 AM
#32
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Well, the media are running around trying to find a story - so far there have been no delays at immigration at Heathrow with some reports saying that things are running more smoothly than normal
Nov 30th, 2011, 02:19 AM
#33
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Alan, Cowboy's canned his trip; I'm not sure that's what he wants to hear! You could have at least added that there are hordes of school-children on the loose, not at school today and with nary a whit of parental oversight, threatening all and sundry on the street corners of Britain the length and breadth of the country. Even had he made the trip he'd have doubtless been mugged in order to fund the obligatory booze and fags.
Dr D.
Dr D.
Nov 30th, 2011, 04:37 AM
#36
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Durrr... 'cos the remainder of the year the professionals are at their posts. And we all know the maxim: <i>"If a job's worth doing then it's worth doing to the inconvenience of the general public."</i>
Nov 30th, 2011, 07:00 AM
#37
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I wonder if inconveniences of security & passport checking are there simply to make us feel that "something is being done". If these were slick then we would probably think that they weren't being effective.
Nov 30th, 2011, 09:01 AM
#39
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<i>They sent in temp workers in greter number than are usually there</i>
There were only two-thirds of the normal number of immigration officers at the desks. Most of the temp workers were involved in getting people into the right queue.
There were only two-thirds of the normal number of immigration officers at the desks. Most of the temp workers were involved in getting people into the right queue.
