My chaotic travel to Heathrow Airport

Travel to heathrow airport from east London with public transport is quite an unpleasant journey as there's not fast and direct to there. It needs several interchange between the tube line to reach destination. Sometimes, the interchange requires walk up or down the staircase. Imagine if you are travelling with more than one luggage, you need to carry them walking up the staircase as the interchange is not wheel friendly.

Nonetheless, my travel to heathrow airport on Thursday evening was chaotic. The train was cancelled and delayed due to the signal failure, which happening so frequent in UK. Sometime, I wonder why this signal failure still happening when we are getting so much advance with the connectivity of Internet, mobile, GPS, satellite , etc. What type of signal system does the railway company use to control and it always failed by different reasons. Don't they have a backup?

The usual 25 minutes economy travel to heathrow, Heathrow Connect at 7.03pm was initially has on time status which make me decide to buy the ticket. By the time i got the ticket, the train status changed to delay. This is really freaked me up. My flight was just 2 hours away and as usual we never know how much is it going to delay. So, I decided to take the expenses train, Heathrow Express which seems more promising as the usual travel time is 15 minutes. Though the sales person advised that was a delayed and it should not take long to depart from the station.

With a ten minutes wait, I manage to get into the train. The train departed 5 minutes later at around quarter passed 7. Unfortunately, the train was hardly moving. Spending about another 10-20 minutes and still within London. I was started to get panic by the time it was 10 to 8pm and I have yet to arrive the airport. I decided to make a call to the airline and asking about the latest closing time at the check in counter and also preparing for the worst case scenario, book for the next flight in case I can't check in.

Luckily, the announcement from the train driver convinced the customer service And she will help me to inform the check-in counter, but the counter will closed at 20 pass 8. By the time she confirmed with me, the train was just outside the Heathrow airport a arrived at 5 pass 8. I was started to rush to the check in counter at terminal 1. Gosh, it was a long run dragging the heavy luggage and manage to check in just on time. Thank god, I do not have to rebook the flight. It was a closed one.

Having jet lag (wake up at 4am) to finish this blog in Hong Kong.




Quiet paddington station without much trains


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:London