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As any of you who know me will know I was due to take a holiday to the Italian city of Rome. I had been looking forward to this trip for quite a few months having grafted together the money to pay for it. I figured that it was about time I wrote this down as a few days have passed and my unrelenting rage has subsided enough…

Before all of the madness there was a general good feeling when I walked out of the office on Thursday lunchtime in order to finish packing before we set off to Glasgow for the night to avoid a rush on Friday morning. It was decided by a brave Heidi that I was to be the one to drive us through to Glasgow. Just after 1300 hours I was installed behind the wheel and off we went.

After a fairly uneventful drive to Glasgow we pulled up at our bed for the night and the place where Bert (the car) was supposed to be spending the next week. The inside of the hotel was surprisingly nice considering that the outside would not have looked out of place in a bombhit Eastern European village.

A few hours later we decided to get some tea but with the uninspiring hotel menu we decided to head out in the car to the Xscape centre where there were a tonne of decent eateries. So far the trip was going well but little were we to know what was to come.

6:30 am on Thursday, my phone went off to signal that it was time to get out of bed and get dressed to be ready for the shuttle bus to the airport at 7:45. Check in went smoothly and we stuffed our happy, smiling faces with the finest foods in all of Greggs. Some time was wasted in the airport shops not buying anything of note and then when the gate number was revealed we wandered over to Gate 19.

A while later the departure board revealed that our plane was going to be 55 minutes late which sparked a minor panic, a quick check of our travel itinerary revealed that we would still have over an hour to make the connection so there was as yet, no crisis.

1030 am or so and the plane has been boarded. I decided to take a picture of what I could see from my seat. Little did I know how familiar this view would become over the course of the day.

Our flight took off, snacks and drinks were served and I decided to start reading a rubbish book. Everything seemed fine until the seatbelt signs came on to prepare us for landing at Gatwick. As the plane noticeably started to circle the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that we would be circling for a while due to a plane from Paris to Cardiff having to perform an emergency landing due to a fault. We were then told that it could be a while before the runway would be clear so we would have to head to Bournemouth to refuel. A cacophony of groans goes up but the staff promised that this stop would only be a short 20 minute turnaround and that connection flights would also be held up and that we shouldn’t worry.

20 minutes, how nice that would have been. 20 minutes passed which then became an hour and then 2 hours. By now people were becoming restless and questions were being asked of the cabin crew. The cabin crew claimed to be unable to tell us the details of our connecting flights while at least 3 of them had iPhones. I managed to find out the details thanks to a quick Google of “gatwick departure information” on my phone.

We were told that we were not allowed to get off the plane for any air due to security reasons because of our luggage being in the hold however the staff seemed quite able of exiting the aircraft more or less at will. Our delay stretched to over 6 hours in which time we were not offered any food and were only given minimal water. 6 hours of being sat in one place is not a comfortable experience. In general I would and indeed have described the treatment as being worse than most people would do to pets let alone other human beings.

Also on my phone I was able to learn the exact times that the plane that should have been taking me to Rome was taxied onto the runway and when it actually went airborne. This was somewhat depressing.

We eventually got to Gatwick airport at 7pm, 8 hours after leaving Glasgow. I haven’t bothered to check the details but I believe that is roughly the time it takes to fly to the USA. Nice. Once arriving in Gatwick we learnt that the airline were trying to put our luggage on a non-existant plane so had to go up to customer services to figure out what the hell to do next.

We spoke to the one member of BA staff who was actually helpful throughout the whole ordeal and she said that we could either be on standby for a flight from Gatwick on Saturday evening or they could guarantee us seats on the 1240 pm flight from Heathrow on Saturday afternoon. We decided that the Heathrow option was better as with being on standby there is no guarantee of actually getting on the plane. The lady who helped us (whose name I forget sadly) arranged bus tickets and a hotel room at Heathrow for us and got someone to escort us through staff security in order to get to the baggage hold to retrieve our cases.

The man who came to escort us to the cases said nothing of use but we had to follow him at an insanely quick pace. We were led into a room containing the good old metal detector things and told to put our metal objects and shoes into a red tray, not a black tray, it HAD to be a red tray… or else… or else what, im not sure but it had to be a red tray. While I was trying to take one of my shoes off (the lace got caught) he ran off with my red tray to put it through the machine which resulted in me being shouted at when I sent my shoes through on their own. I should point out as well that I could not untie one of my laces so I effectively trashed a pair of Converse in the process. Perhaps I will invoice BA for it.

Baggage was received and we headed to Heathrow. Arrival at Heathrow involved getting off one bus then finding the hotel shuttle service that took us to our home for Friday night, a Premier Inn. I don’t have a huge amount to say about the Premier Inn. It was clean and gave us food. Our room was actually a decent size and I had a decent sleep. I woke up feeling refreshed and thought that all the bad luck was behind us.

I jinxed us a short time later by telling Heidi that since we were booked onto this flight for sure that everything was going to be OK today and we would be eating gelato in a matter of hours. Hotel Shuttle bus to Terminal 5 was quick enough and a quick look at the departures board said that while a flight to Athens was cancelled ours was available for check in at area B.

No it wasn’t… Attempting to check in using these new automated terminals suggested that we ask a member of BA staff to help (their words, not mine) us. Once I had confirmed which flight I wished to board to the lady she said “that one is cancelled.”. “Oh come on!” was actually the exact words out of my mouth. I didn’t swear and to this day I’m not sure how. While I feel that “Oh come on” is a perfectly reasonable way of expressing frustration the BA staff member disagreed and took offense saying “it’s not like I’m going to lie to you is it?!” so I replied with a long, detailed version of the previous days events. She didn’t reply.

We then spent 4 hours in a queue and tried to phone BA customer services. Turns out they don’t operate a customer services call center at weekends. At one point some woman behind us in the queue started asking stupid questions about if she was in the right queue and where section D was (she was standing in it and yes it was the right queue) she then started asking the same questions to a random member of airport staff which prompted the calm until Heidi to turn round and snap at her. I can’t remember what was said but it was very amusing to me at the time.

After the 4 hours had passed and we had reached the front of the queue we were told that we were now able to…. join another f***ing queue! I mean I know the British are good at queueing but seriously??!?! I managed to receive a print out of my rights as a traveller and noticed the section that says if the carrier cannot get us to our destination they are obliged to return us to our original departure point. Noticing this decided that if they couldn’t get us to Rome that Saturday night or even Sunday morning we would ask to go back to Glasgow.

The queue was boring so imagine another couple of hours passing….

So there we were at the desk actually speaking to yet another BA staff member who was fairly useless and decided to say that we couldn’t get to Rome until Monday at the earliest and that they did not need to get us back to Glasgow if I decided that this was unacceptable… Fortunately I still had the piece of paper concerning our rights and waved it around like some kind of massive legislative phallus. 2 seats to Glasgow were then booked and the travelling home was smooth from then on. We even landed in Glasgow 15 minutes early.

We got a shuttle bus to the hotel from Thursday and collected Bert. With it now being 7pm on Saturday we once again headed to Xscape to get a meal. Guess what we had…

Yep, Italian in Braehead, not quite the same as outside the Vatican but at least they actually fed us. So now you have a good idea of why I am not best pleased with British Airways and why I’m only ever going to arrange travel on direct flights.