Heathrow: a tale of disorganization (1 of 2)

As I reported in my previous post, I was recently involved in a major traveling hijack.

Last weekend we spent a few days in London, with our inbound flight planned for December, the 10th.
When we woke up that morning we found roads all covered in snow: how Christmasy!
Snow kept on falling for the day but the overall amount of it on the ground never got us worried.

Clearly, we underestimated the combination of bad weather and the disorganization at Heathrow.

We left our friends' house, hopped on the Piccadilly line and managed to be at Heathrow T5 by 1:30pm, 3 hours before our BA850 flight departure.
We tried to check-in at the automated kiosk but it was a no-go without a passport or new generation ID (we later came to know even those people who had such documents couldn't check-in at the kiosk). We were not even allowed to web check-in because we were "part of a group booking".

Not long after, a British Airways employee shouted in the wild the flight has been cancelled.
"Wild" is the keyword here because of the mess this announcement (being just one in a long series of flight cancellations) created; the screens around the check-in area were not even updated, thus fueling the confusion.

People queuing up for accomodation request after flight cancellation announcements

The terminal falls into a state of chaos.

British Airways personnel is a rare breed and, when you find any, they of course can't make a definitive claim or provide useful information.
We queued up to get the accommodation sorted out by BA but gave up quickly as the wait felt never ending (we later found out at the end of the queue all you got was an A4 paper saying to self-help for hotel, along with instructions on how to claim a refund from the company).

In the meanwhile, we called everyone we thought could help only to find out that:

• British Airways is "not committed on providing any assistance" because we're "booked as part of a group". All we get is a different landline number to call...
• ...which of course is not active during the weekends
• The travel agency we ultimately booked with is closed on Sundays
• The emergency number from the same agency is not reachable
• Volagratis, the "man in the middle" which forwarded our booking request to a local travel agency, provided no definitive feedback but at least we got some conversation going and they escalated a ticket to get us re-booked on another flight

As it was clear to us we had no chance to go back home on Sunday, we eventually decided to go back to our friends' house in London for a cheap night under a warm roof.

Part 2 will be uploaded later tonight...