Our trip to Russia didn’t begin on an upbeat. We left from Newark airport heading to London where we were supposed to connect to Saint Petersburg. We left Newark just before 7:00pm – Midnight in London. Four hours later – long before we were supposed to land at Heathrow, the lights came on and the flight attendants stood at the front of the cabin. We were informed that there was a technical problem that required that we turn back and land at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Once off the airplane (at about 2:00AM local time) we were informed that the cockpit crew had smelled smoke, and even though the smell went away and they and their engineers in England thought they knew exactly what had gone wrong, the felt that they had to get the plane on the ground as quickly as possible.
We had no idea how long we were going to be there, and neither did Canadian Immigration, so the two Immigration Inspectors they called in from home at that ungodly hour began processing all of us just in case were going to have to be sent to local hotels (I wonder if St. John’s has enough hotel rooms to accommodate all the passengers from a full Boeing 777?).
We spent about two hours in the baggage claim area where there are perhaps twenty seats – oh yeah, and the baggage carousels. Alana De La Garza (yeah, the one from Law and Order) and her new hubby got two of them. Most of the rest of us sat on the carousels – some in the prone position attempting to sleep. There wasn’t even a vending machine there, but it wouldn’t have made much difference – there probably wasn’t a single Canadian dime in the pockets of the whole contingent.
Once the problem (which was exactly as expected) was repaired (by pulling the power plug from a defunct cooling fan under the instrument panel and taping the cord out of harm’s way), we were reboarded and went on to London, arriving six hours late and far too late to connect to the one daily flight from London to Saint Petersburg.
Heathrow is very confusing. For one thing we were expecting to land at Terminal 4. That’s a temporary situation. Flights from the US are supposed to arrive at the new terminal 5, but because of the initial electro-mechanical disaster with the baggage handling system in T5, Newark flights are temporarily sent to T4 – unless, that is, they arrive at a busing gate. We landed at a busing gate, and the bus took us to T5. That’s where our connecting flight left from several hours earlier, but in the confusion we wound up taking a connecting bus to T4. When we got to T4 Adrianne missed her pocket book. We went through all four bags – two roll-aboards and two small hand-carry bags – two or three times. We found her passport, which she handed to me to hold, but the pocketbook was nowhere to be found.
Now nearly in a panic, we asked if there was a way to get back to the plane. There was not. We were directed to the baggage office – you know, where you go when your bags don’t arrive – but to get there we had to go through UK Immigration, and to do that we had to fill out a landing card for each of us and we needed our passports, and we couldn’t find Adrianne’s. We went through all four bags twice more before Adrianne remembered handing her passport to me. I found it in my pocket. We quickly went through UK Immigration and headed to the opposite end of the baggage claim hall (everywhere we went at Heathrow was at the opposite end of where we first entered) to the bag office where we explained our dilemma. Fortunately they weren’t busy, and one of the gentlemen on duty grabbed his jacket and went out to the airplane to look for the pocketbook. In the meantime, the other gentlemen told us that we had been rescheduled for the Saint Petersburg flight on the following day. Twenty minutes later, when the first gentleman showed up with the pocketbook in hand, our panic level dropped significantly.
An hour or two later we arrived at the Renaissance Hotel, where British Air picked up the tab for the room and meals. There were three couples headed for the same Grand Circle ship on our flight – we met both at the airport in St. John’s, and I remembered the name of one couple. They were also in the Renaissance Hotel, so we connected and had dinner together. We later learned that the third couple connected to Saint Petersburg on Lufthansa via Munich. We could have made that connection despite all the confusion at Heathrow had it been offered to us, but it wasn’t. We and the Kleinfields arrived exactly one day late to Saint Petersburg where we were met by Grand Circle representatives and taken to the ship. It was almost dinner time.
We had no idea how long we were going to be there, and neither did Canadian Immigration, so the two Immigration Inspectors they called in from home at that ungodly hour began processing all of us just in case were going to have to be sent to local hotels (I wonder if St. John’s has enough hotel rooms to accommodate all the passengers from a full Boeing 777?).
We spent about two hours in the baggage claim area where there are perhaps twenty seats – oh yeah, and the baggage carousels. Alana De La Garza (yeah, the one from Law and Order) and her new hubby got two of them. Most of the rest of us sat on the carousels – some in the prone position attempting to sleep. There wasn’t even a vending machine there, but it wouldn’t have made much difference – there probably wasn’t a single Canadian dime in the pockets of the whole contingent.
Once the problem (which was exactly as expected) was repaired (by pulling the power plug from a defunct cooling fan under the instrument panel and taping the cord out of harm’s way), we were reboarded and went on to London, arriving six hours late and far too late to connect to the one daily flight from London to Saint Petersburg.
Heathrow is very confusing. For one thing we were expecting to land at Terminal 4. That’s a temporary situation. Flights from the US are supposed to arrive at the new terminal 5, but because of the initial electro-mechanical disaster with the baggage handling system in T5, Newark flights are temporarily sent to T4 – unless, that is, they arrive at a busing gate. We landed at a busing gate, and the bus took us to T5. That’s where our connecting flight left from several hours earlier, but in the confusion we wound up taking a connecting bus to T4. When we got to T4 Adrianne missed her pocket book. We went through all four bags – two roll-aboards and two small hand-carry bags – two or three times. We found her passport, which she handed to me to hold, but the pocketbook was nowhere to be found.
Now nearly in a panic, we asked if there was a way to get back to the plane. There was not. We were directed to the baggage office – you know, where you go when your bags don’t arrive – but to get there we had to go through UK Immigration, and to do that we had to fill out a landing card for each of us and we needed our passports, and we couldn’t find Adrianne’s. We went through all four bags twice more before Adrianne remembered handing her passport to me. I found it in my pocket. We quickly went through UK Immigration and headed to the opposite end of the baggage claim hall (everywhere we went at Heathrow was at the opposite end of where we first entered) to the bag office where we explained our dilemma. Fortunately they weren’t busy, and one of the gentlemen on duty grabbed his jacket and went out to the airplane to look for the pocketbook. In the meantime, the other gentlemen told us that we had been rescheduled for the Saint Petersburg flight on the following day. Twenty minutes later, when the first gentleman showed up with the pocketbook in hand, our panic level dropped significantly.
An hour or two later we arrived at the Renaissance Hotel, where British Air picked up the tab for the room and meals. There were three couples headed for the same Grand Circle ship on our flight – we met both at the airport in St. John’s, and I remembered the name of one couple. They were also in the Renaissance Hotel, so we connected and had dinner together. We later learned that the third couple connected to Saint Petersburg on Lufthansa via Munich. We could have made that connection despite all the confusion at Heathrow had it been offered to us, but it wasn’t. We and the Kleinfields arrived exactly one day late to Saint Petersburg where we were met by Grand Circle representatives and taken to the ship. It was almost dinner time.
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