Blog About Tour Charts Downloads Contact

Posts Tagged ‘Heathrow’

The art of missing a flight

Friday, April 10th, 2009

DISCLAIMER TO PROMOTERS: I seldom miss flights. I’m kind of an organizational freak. But when you travel as much as we do… shit happens! I won’t miss your shows though. 

I had a pretty spectacular experience at London’s satanic Heathrow airport today. As I was getting ready to leave my hotel earlier, I knew there were good chances I’d miss my flight. I had a late gig last night, now I had to go pick up my clean laundry and I really wanted to film a hotel review before leaving. You’ll see when I post it, my last line was “I’m probably missing my flight now so I gotta run”. See, I do this for yall! But seriously, there’s so many flights from London to Geneva, mine was pretty early, so I preferred getting everything done than stressing too much about the flight. The cab ride lasted 1 hour and cost me the equivalent of $150, but that’s standard for London. When I got to Heathrow, it was indeed too late for my flight. I went to the ticket desk and got on the next one. There were some snags due to my ticket being non transferable but I dealt with it. On another day I may have gotten upset but I’m running on autopilot and just want to get to my destination.

On my way to security there’s a restaurant that looks decent. There’s always the age-old dilemma of do you eat before or after security… but this spot was right there and I had a fair amount of time, having just changed my flight, so I went for it. The all-day full english breakfast should get my day going on the right foot, right? Love those beans. When I’m done eating I look at my watch, my flight is in 35 minutes, I should go. I make my way to security and I guess Heathrow’s Terminal 5 has a new electronic system. They scan your boarding pass and if you’re past a certain cut-off time, they categorically don’t let you through. The lady says “sir you’re less than 35 minutes before your flight, I can’t let you through.” Incredulous, I show her my platinum frequent flyer card. No dice! Ouch. I tell her I already missed my first flight. I tell her I’ll run! Nope, it’s all electronic. They can’t let me through. 

So just like that, I had to go back to the ticketing office and book myself on my 3rd flight. Suddenly this simple journey to Geneva had turned into an all-day affair. Hence the following tweet:

I really mean it…