Escape from Heathrow

My daughter is very upset. It’s the summer of 2019, and we’ve just passed through security at Terminal 3, where they rummaged through my bag and confiscated an empty chocolate milk bottle. “That was for my fairy garden,” she cries. She’s gotten very attached to these empty chocolate milk bottles, and I’m not sure we’ll make it home if I lose another one.

Now we’re winding our way through the Duty Free mall toward the big waiting room (perfume, watches, booze, chocolate bars) and I remember other trips in years past, and other hours I’ve spent waiting here for other flights home. Airports can leave a persistent, tinny aftertaste.

After a quick check of the board we make our way toward Gate 29 and our flight to Chicago. _001’s shoes keep falling off on the moving walkways, and I’m in constant fear of losing one of her loveys, or another milk bottle. Traveling with a five-year-old is challenge enough; nonrev traveling — flying standby, essentially hitchhiking on an airplane — has the added complication of wondering if we’ll make it on the plane. But we’ve had good luck on this trip so far.

It’s one of the great perks of working at an airline, being able to travel on a whim. But for nonrev travel you have to be flexible and patient, because you’re rightfully at the bottom of the standby list. You might get on the flight; you might not.

Part of the journey is getting there; the other, harder part is getting back again. At Gate 29: “Ah. This is a standby ticket. If you head to Gate 33, they can sort you out there.” She smiles and hands our tickets back. OK. No big deal….

Nonrev traveling with this five-year-old isn’t so bad, other than her shoes. _001 is already a well-traveled trooper (says her proud dad) and at my best I know how to keep her fed and happy. But I’m not always at my best.

It turns out the attendant back at Gate 29 had a good poker face: Gate 33 is being used as a clearinghouse for standby travelers and others without confirmed seats, and it’s a grim scene: we’ve walked right into the beginning of the summer holiday, and all the flights everywhere are full. But gradually the gate agents work through their lists and call out some names, and a few lucky folks manage to escape. “Cheers, mate! Good luck!”

The herd thins, leaving the weak and vulnerable. Travelers start hedging their bets, trying for other flights through other places. One soul left behind pleads, “Just get me anywhere in the US; I’ll figure out the rest from there.” But _001 and I are traveling on a Zed ticket, which apparently means “Zed luck.” Zed luck means we have no other options than our original stopover (O’Hare); other routes — through DFW, or Charlotte, or LAX — are off-limits to us. Zed luck means we sit there and watch others win their tickets out (“Well done, mate!”), while we get shunted further and further down the standby list as the day wears on. Zed luck means that this airline has four or five flights a day between Heathrow and O’Hare, and we get bumped off all of them.

I get a nudge from the woman behind me in the queue. “Just thought you should know: your daughter just licked the barrier stand.” Unforced parenting error: A five-year-old has spent the last few hours in an international airport. At this point (I tell myself) the germs are probably good for her.

Finally the gate agent gives us a reprieve, or at least permission to leave without missing the next cull. “We won’t be calling any more flights for an hour or so. Go grab something to eat.”

When you start seeing the travelers you recognize from Gate 33 in other parts of the airport — at the Duty Free, at the sandwich shop, at a competing airline’s ticket counter — you have officially achieved limbo at Heathrow. You start thinking that everybody here works for an airline and is nonreving somewhere: the man in the derby hat; the woman in the wheelchair holding a number of Harrod’s bags; the kid leaving prints on the plate-glass window. We’re all waiting, gathering cobwebs, wilting like wildflowers in the sun.

_001 and I grab a bite and try a last-ditch gambit: to JFK on Virgin Atlantic; of course that one’s oversold, too. So at about 3:00 we give up for the day, and steel ourselves for the humiliating pass through Immigration and back out to Blighty. (“Where are you going?” “To my brother’s house.” “How long is your stay?” “We’re trying to get on a flight out tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” “Yeah. We didn’t make it on the flight today.” “What do you mean, ‘you didn’t make it onto the flight today?’ Don’t you have a confirmed ticket?” “Uh, um, I work for an airline and…” This, the right answer, finally elicits an eyeroll and release from the guard.) Then we fight our way through a long underground tunnel to the Piccadilly Line, where the queues are held up by more bleary-eyed fresh arrivals poking stupidly at the Oyster Card machines.

And back into town we go. On the train I tell her about the Piccadilly Line, and that this is a refurbished 1973 Stock train, and why that’s such a special thing. She nods politely and falls asleep. I let her doze for a while, nudging her awake at Acton Town so she can slip her shoes back on in time to exit the Tube at Hammersmith, where we drag our luggage back across the bridge for another night at my brother’s house.

We’re up even earlier the next day for the drive back to Heathrow, hoping for the first flight out to Chicago. We wind through south-west London, back through another merge onto to the M4, then back through security — where they zip open my suitcase, now stuffed with dirty laundry — then back through the Duty Free perfumery, back through the giant waiting room with the Boot’s and Pret A Manger and Cafe Nero, and back down the long corridor toward the first flight to Chicago waiting at Gate 29, where an officious gate attendant takes a cursory glance at our boarding passes. “Please proceed to Gate 33.” Oh, no. “But we did this dance yesterday!” “Please proceed to Gate 33!”

So it’s back to Gate 33, back with more familiar faces from yesterday (“Still here, eh? Me too,”), and back to wondering if we’ll ever make it out of Heathrow. Maybe the old man with the walker has been on the standby list since he could stand unassisted. Maybe we’re all permanently marooned here in the land of Duty Free perfume and Pret A Manger. “Are we going to stay in London forever?” asks _001. And I’m beginning to wonder what to say.

She plays near the window. I watch sadly as our flight backs out of its gate and leaves without us. _001 keeps herself busy with her loveys and milk bottles while I hunt for connecting flights in the US, in a tricky game of moving hopscotch.

Then an hour later, unbelievably, our name is called: we’re on the next flight to Chicago. The gate agent hands us real boarding passes and sends us across the hall, where the plane is an hour late and counting: plenty of time for one last Americano, but it means we’ll miss our direct connection home.

And then our group is called and we head down the jetway and onto the plane. We have two seats near the lavs, but they’re our seats and they’re together and we’re on a plane flying west, toward home.

_001 has kept me on my best behavior, and is just the right age for this trip: any younger and she’d be restless and inconsolable; any older and she’d know how much of a fiasco this was.

“Guess what, kiddo? We might be taking three planes home!”

“Three planes? Hooray!”

The final cost to get home: two days, eleven standby lists, three flights, four airports, seven cups of coffee, eight time zones, two Arnold Palmers, two border crossings, three Thames crossings (one on foot), six packets of Biskoff cookies, one Bloody Mary, six bowls of Malties, three sets of pajamas, one Tube ride, two visits to Boot’s, two to Pret A Manger, two playgrounds, 14 duty-free Cadbury bars (not enough), one cheeseburger, two slices of pizza, three meatballs, two dinner rolls, two tubs of chocolate ice cream, six departure gates, one packet of Hobnobs, three security checkpoints, three bottles of chocolate milk, one overheated banquet tent, at least one “NO FIREARMS” sign, one charter bus, three bananas, two meltdowns (“No more airplanes! Please! No more airplanes!”), one pair of too-big kids’ shoes, and one licked bollard.