Saturday: Scout is moping; she knows I’m leaving (she knows a suitcase on the floor rarely bodes well for her). Up at 6:30, at the airport at 9am (I love living in a small town: the airport is 8 minutes away, there is plenty of parking, and I even ran into someone I know in the lounge, how local am I?) At Check In came the first setback: even tho my suitcase is within the carry-on dimensions, it is too heavy for ‘valet luggage’ – you know – that thing where you don’t check it, but at the gate they take it and put it on a trolley, then into storage and you get it back on the jetway as you exit the plane). In a situation like that, how is weight a factor? They all go in the belly of the plane. Hmm.
Great flight, beautiful views, arrived early. My next flight from Glasgow to London took off on time, made it to London again early. But, and here’s where things start to go sideways, no bags. There were 4 of us, all from the same flight, who didn’t get our luggage. We waited about 20 minutes after all the other passengers had left, then proceeded to fill in all the forms. This is where I made a classic mistake: after completing the forms with all my contact info, etc, I handed the forrm to the clerk without taking a picture of it – no record of the lost luggage claim. Damn.
I had booked a hotel in the airport, so it was only a 5-minute walk. Got to the reception desk – no reservation. Sigh. Not my day. Now to some extent, this one was on me: I had screwed around with the reservations on Thursday, cancelling, booking, re-booking, etc… But I did have Expedia’s confirmation so after much hemming & hawing, Mr. Cranky-Pants behind the desk did give me my room. Still no luggage, but at least a place to sleep (priorities, Elaine).
I set the alarm for 3:45 am, because my online boarding pass said to be there 3 hours in advance and the news this week has been all about the staffing issues with British Air and Heathrow, and the horrific wait times. In fact, the clerk in the Brit Air luggage department, upon hearing of my flight time the next morning did say, “good luck with that”.
At least I slept well.