Thursday, October 26, 2006

An empty London Luton

Luton Airport is a busy airport - the easyJet headquarters (though they now have more flights out of Gatwick than Luton) and home to the easyAcademy for training up orange-suited flight crew.

So picture the scene at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon when lots of people start to arrive for the early evening flights home. Empty. Not a single passenger queuing up to check in.

The reason: chaos on the roads outside the terminal. A bad road accident near one of the car parts had jammed up the roads. Buses from the train station and distant hire car park were stuck on the approach roads. The nimble of us jumped out of the buses and walked down the hill, round the corner, under the bridge and back up to the terminal. Hot sweaty and on time. The queue through security was similarly light.

Moral of story: it’s always worth turning up at the airport early. That way, even when you have to fill out an accident report to explain that Hertz delivered a vehicle with a puncture and argue that you aren’t going to pay for the repair, even when your bus gets stuck three quarters of a mile away from the terminal, you still have time to get checked in and grab a cup of tea to take onto the flight.

Oh, and looks like Starbucks at Aldergrove have had trouble filling a couple of long-term vacancies, causing the problems getting opened up in the mornings. Maybe Costa and Café Rankin pay more to attract enough staff to turn up to open each morning? (If the franchise at Belfast International Airport isn't open at 5.30am some morning, feel free to ring their Customer Care team to complain - they may even send you some vouchers!)

Same story this morning - not opening until 6pm. Left a message with Starbucks Customer Team answering machine. No reply yet.

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