The London Series #1

​One of our family goals is to travel internationally every other year.  This year is our year and we decided to try a 10 day Road Scholar Tour to London.  Several of our friends have participated in Road Scholar Tours and given rave reviews.  One of the main benefits is that they don’t take you shopping.  Our tours to Ireland, Egypt and France all included scheduled shopping trips which I consider a diversion. 
We took the path of least work and scheduled our flight from Chicago to London through Road Scholar, which, no fault of theirs was a mistake because we didn’t get to select the airline we wanted to fly.  We were assigned American Airlines from Chicago to London because they have some sort of reciprocal agreement with British Airways – who knew.   We booked a stay/fly/park Wyndom Hotel a few minutes from O’Hare the day before our flight.  The advantage is getting a good night’s sleep before flying and a place to park the car with six days free and we paid for another six days.
We arrived at O’Hare early in the day to get bags checked in and through security at least three hours before the flight.  Baggage check-in and boarding passes are done at a kiosk which required someone to help us use but still was not frustrating and took less than ten minutes.  As it turned out we were given a TSA security pass so it took less than five minutes to walk through to our terminal.  As a result we had a lot of time to kill – about six hours.
The time to board our flight finally arrived and a large group of travelers lined up outside the gate.  The person making the announcements was unintelligible and a group of people rushed the desk, asked for clarification and then came back to the group waiting to explain her instructions.  After this happened several times I approached the desk and explained that the announcements were unintelligible and asked if another staff member could make the announcements.  The American Airlines staff explained the problem was poor acoustics in the terminal.  I pointed out that we could hear and understand announcements from staff four gates away.  They simply refused to change the person making announcements.  We were lined up to board when they announced a gate change.  A gate change, at this point?  We all struck off to the nearby gate but no staff was there to organize boarding the plane.  Then there was an announcement that there would be a delay in our flight because the plane we were going to use was being changed.
The story offered by American Airlines staff was pure fiction.  A plane flying in from Madrid had been hit by lightening.  Per safety procedures that plane’s next flight was to be delayed two hours.  The plane we were to board for London had been sitting at the gate since early afternoon.   We never did receive an explanation why our plane was swapped for another plane.  In addition, all the information on our London flight was removed from the information board and instead they posted information on a flight that was to leave at 10:15 pm.
At that point I decided their deception was intentional.  Our flight to London was delayed two hours.  As a result we missed our ride from Heathrow to our hotel and waited another two hours at Heathrow to for a ride.  Our original schedule was to be in London for lunch and we got there just in time for dinner.
Two lessons were learned.   NEVER, NEVER fly American Airlines.  Book your own flight when traveling and don’t depend on the tour company.
P.S.  The tour leader met us in the lobby of the hotel and apologized profusely.  The our company contracts for transportation service and only learned of our dilemma after it happened.  The tour guide arranged for hot tea, sandwiches and a potato leek soup  that may have saved my life.
Next week – jet lag blues.