UK Trip #3: The Freaky Flights to the U.K.

BWI Terminal. Cr: facebook sn jetboy787

The flights over to Scotland were a challenge and fraught with delays and issues.
FLIGHTY FLIGHTS -   The first flight was slated to go from BWI to Heathrow Airport, London. After getting there around 6:30 p.m. the flight was supposed to leave at 9:30 p.m.. Delays and thunderstorms in the vicinity (but not visible area) caused the flight to depart at 10:30 p.m. , an hour late. I was concerned because we had a connecting flight in London to take us to Edinbugh, Scotland, but there was about 2 1/2 hours between flights.
   Once we were airborne, the pilot came on and told us that the flight was being re-routed inland over Pennsylvania to avoid some strong weather. That added about another 45 minutes to the delay...
DINNER DILEMMA - British Airways is a great airline. They really provide excellent service and take care of their passengers. However, their passengers (i.e. me (Rob)) need to be cautious about eating stuff. At midnight our time, they served dinner. It was some kind of spiced beef... Well, over the course of the next 5 hours of flight, I was up almost every hour running to the bathroom and getting sick. By the time we arrived, I was better (but wound up being sick all day) and totally exhausted.

Rob's tummy troubles

PLANE INSANITY - Changing planes at Heathrow was a lot more time consuming and challenging than I expected. First, our plane was 2 hours LATE in arriving. We had just 30 minutes to make the connecting flight when we got off the plane in Heathrow. We didn't know that we had to go through customs before boarding a connection - didn't think about it -  and that took about 20 minutes. We then had to go through security...
  When we finally got through all that mess, the signage was lacking. Signs directed people down a corridor for "connecting flights" and went to an elevator, a down escalator and split into two corridors. At that point there was NO signage of which way to go. Tom asked a flight attendant who directed us down a level and on a subway ride to another terminal. When we arrived we saw our connecting flight was closing out so we ran. We got to the gate just minutes after the door closed. It was too late. 
SUPER HELPFUL - A British Airways gate agent, Kathleen Olah at Gate A2 on June 18th at 11:40 a.m. local time was extremely accommodating. She stayed past her shift, rebooked us on the next flight to Edinburgh, Scotland, re-routed our luggage for the next flight, and let us use her phone to call the taxi service in Scotland (who would be waiting for our arrival there) and inform them we'd be late. In addition, Kathleen gave us two 5 pound (British money, btw) vouchers to buy lunch while we waited for the next flight. Wow. THAT is Customer Service!!!
- We had a light lunch of fruit and cake and took our flight to Scotland (which was delayed 15 minutes).
NEXT: Arrival in Scotland!