Leavin' On a Jet Plane

Firstly, you're quite welcome. I know how excited you are to have that song now earwormed into your brains all day. And if you'd somehow escaped the earworm from the title, hopefully this paragraph did the trick. Now that my work is done, I'll move along to my point :D

I'm typing to you from the Singapore Airlines' lounge at Heathrow, whilst stuffing my face with a cream cheese and salmon sandwich. The scary thing is, I'm the only one in here and there is an entire mini-fridge of sandwiches. Not to mention more food beyond that. And I've 3.5 hours to kill, scary. And then there's my 3-course meal on the plane and the snack later. And then there's tomorrow. I have lots of stretchy clothes in my suitcase. I'm flying United, but they're partnered with Singapore and the Singapore lounge is way better. There's hardly any food at the United lounge and that's just criminal.

I decided yesterday that I might as well just get up and come to the airport, since I was either going to sit around my flat all day doing various online tasks or I was going to sit here and do the same tasks. So here I am. I'm a little grumpy because I can only get the 2G connection here, which is dial-up speed basically, but I'll live.

I took a very handy train to get here. It's £25 roundtrip and was totally worth it. I walked myself and my wheely suitcase the 3 blocks to Paddington, went to the ticket kiosk and printed out the tickets I bought online last night and walked onto the train. A few minutes later, we left and we were here in 15 minutes. Handy.

But, in my new British world, there are even stupider airport security rules than the good ole U S of A. This is my first venture out of the UK since January and I guess it's the first time I ever tried to get all my stuff carry-on worthy. So, here you go, a handy dandy guide to keeping your sanity whilst checking-in at Heathrow, keeping in mind that my new job means I will be flying this airline very frequently, so suddenly, I'm keenly aware of how 25-30% of my life will soon be spent.

First, an overall phrase that you just have to accept and get over:

"It's for security purposes."

Well, no, it usually isn't and a) I don't appreciate the insult to my intelligence that insinuates and more importantly b) it's the boy who cried wolf. When they start claiming that everything is "for security purposes," I'm not going to believe them when it really is.

1) If you are flying on a stupid, customer service nightmare US carrier and your trip started here in the UK, you can't use online check-in. I discovered this this morning. This was also where I had to suck it up about the security phrase.

I asked the very nice girl at the United info desk why I hadn't been allowed to check-in online and she said "oh, that's for security purposes, you can't check-in if your flight originates outside the United States." Now, I can be grumpy, very grumpy in fact, but she was very nice so I was nice (but blunt) back. "No it isn't, BA lets me do it, I guess United just hasn't set it up yet" I said. There wasn't really a response she could give me, but we chit-chatted about immaterial things for a minute and then I went to a kiosk to check-in and was soon back wheeling by her with my boarding passes, with a smile and a "bye!" But, no go! She stopped me.

I'd very carefully packed my carry-on sized wheely to be carry-on worthy. I have all my 3 ounce containers in a ziploc baggy, etc. This because I'm connecting onto Boston and I was trying to avoid the baggage dance at Dulles. But apparently you can only have 1 bag on flights leaving the UK. Not a purse and a bag. A purse or a bag. I tried to stuff my messenger bag in the suitcase, but it was quite hopeless, so after a bit of shuffling of things from the suitcase to the messenger bag, I glumly approached the counter to check my suitcase. I was trying to avoid checking anything because Dulles is retardedly designed, as every Washingtonian is painfully aware, and I now have to go get my stupid suitcase from baggage claim at Dulles, before I go to my Boston gate and that puts me outside security I think, so I have to go back through. Oh well.

So ok, suitcaseless and grumpy, I walked by the nice girl again, except I stopped on my own to get organised and she said "I don't know how old you are, but you seem wiser than me, let me ask you a question." So, flattered suddenly and a bit less grumpy, I waited for the question. From our earlier chit-chatting, she knew I was ridiculously early for my flight and I'm sure she was bored. Well, it was a man question...one I have all too much of that aforementioned wisdom about. So, I gave my wisdom on the matter, ending with "men are idiots, unfortunately." We laughed and I carried on to go through security.

The last time I flew out of the UK, I was pleased to note that they didn't do the stupid shoe game. You do take all your suspect items out and put them in bins, but you get to keep your shoes.

Well, moving back to our handy list, these days, after you go through "security," you proceed past passport control and then, think you get to waddle off to your gate? Ha ha! Not so much.

This is new since January, but the UK has the shoe game as its own step. Annoying.

So, 2) after passport control, you have to take your shoes off and put them through the scanner.

So there you have it, after that whole song and dance, here I sit, waiting to get on my merry way to the states.

Happy Thanksgiving!