London (Heathrow), Thursday, 1995-10-12 08:30 local (Z+1)
This might best be described as a predicament letter. The predicament is as follows. yesterday we were supposed to commercial Paris De Gaulle (Charles De Gaulle is one of two major Paris airports—the other is Orly) to London Heathrow (London also has two major airports—Heathrow and Gatwick) and then catch an Air India flight to JFK. De Gaulle was fogged in and the airplane we were to be on was two hours late in landing. The net effect was that we didn't get to London until just before the departure of the Air India flight. The problem there was that we (“we” is I and a flight engineer) didn't have tickets—they were supposed to be waiting for us at the Air India transfer counter. We got to the transfer counter only to find out that it wasn't even manned. We then headed directly to the gate just in time to see the airplane taxiing out.
There were two other guys who had been with us (the captain I had been flying with and another engineer) who had had tickets and who, we thought, had made the flight since they had been able to proceed directly to the gate. It turned out they hadn't quite made it either, but at this point we didn't know that. Anyway there we were, no tickets, no airplane, and sadly, no support. A call to crew scheduling in New York elicited only the news that Tower would not pay for a later commercial flight since the Air India tickets were free, the lack of tickets at the transfer desk was not crew scheduling's problem as they had requested them from Air India, and while Tower would pay for a hotel for the night, it appeared that would be a problem finding a room as the London hotels were full. At least crew scheduling agreed to work on the hotel problem. I said I'd call back later and went to Air India operations to work on the ticket problem for the next day.
Chaos there, 20 people crammed into small quarters doing a job that other airlines do with maybe 4 people. The Indian make-work philosophy may create jobs, but it really gets in the way of getting things done. After nearly an hour of bickering, all parties concerned agreed that their London operations had no tickets for us and had not received (or had thrown away) any request for tickets. Back on the phone to crew scheduling, I am told they'll “look into” the ticket problem, and I'm given a number to call in London, a ground handling agent that will find us rooms. The only problem is that the number doesn't work. After a lot of asking around and conversing with a British Telecom operator, we finally figure out that the number is mostly correct, but crew scheduling gave us the wrong prefix codes. We finally get the agent on the phone. The good news is that he's found rooms, the bad is that we find out that the other two crew members didn't make the flight either—that's bad for them but not for us since one of them is a captain and has a company credit card. So, a night in London and we'll try to get out this afternoon. My confidence level is not high. If there are not tickets this time, I plan to make some serious jump-seating efforts. The problem there is that the Air India flight is almost the last one of the day to leave for JFK and that the remaining flights are on carriers that normally do not allow international jumpseating.
An interesting tidbit: the flight engineer I am with was talking with a Delta captain. Delta is making major cost reductions and asking for major wage concessions from their pilots. They're trying to reduce their seat mile costs to 7.5 cents per seat mile. Tower's is 4.5 cents per seat mile. Of course, the Delta captain doesn't have to worry about getting stuck in London because his company insists he use a free ticket on another carrier.
I NEED to get home. My body has dropped into the 5 hours of sleep then useful consciousness for about 5 hours mode. I should have spent most of the time last night in bed even if I wasn't sleeping, but I allowed myself (my fault) to be talked into going into downtown London to see a play. The captain we're stuck with is a real “culture” fan, and he really pressured all of us to go to this play. So, on the tube on down to downtown to see Petula Clark in Sunset Boulevard. I've made a resolve never to let myself be talked into something I really don't want to do by another captain. At least I can say I've now seen a British stage play—wasn't that great, we have as good at the Hult Center.
All clothes are dirty except for the pair of socks, shirt, and shorts I'm going to put on in a few minutes. The problem with these high class hotels is that they have no guest laundromat. They'll, of course, do it for you but the cost is outrageous.
God, isn't this glamorous? <g>
Terry