I was on the way to the departures area at Gatwick airport yesterday afternoon when all hell broke loose on one of the moving walkways up from the first to second floor.
A large family, including kids, all with overladen baggage trolleys, arrived at the top of the walkway. The lead member managed to get his trolley sideways and it became wedged.
Panic ensued as everyone ploughed into the mangled heap of people and bags at the top, the sound of a young girl screaming piercing the air as she got squashed between baggage trolleys.
Several people rushed to try and haul the wedged trolley off the conveyor while others made unsuccessful attempts to hit the ’emergency stop’ button. Unbelievably, despite the mayhem, several officials in the vicinity paused to view the carnage but not one made an attempt to offer assistance, they just stared for a moment and then carried on their merry way. Unbelievable.
As no-one seemed able to activate stop button to work I rushed over and managed to turn the conveyor off – it was a slider not a button as such. Fortunately, no-one was injured and the large family, curses abounding (I assume they were curses, I don’t understand Arabic), extricated their trolleys and the logjam began to clear.
The reaction of officials was unbelievable as it could have been quite serious. Perhaps it was so-called ‘health and safety’ concerns, who knows.
The second incident was a little more amusing and occurred as we were boarding the plane. A young woman was expressing her displeasure at being told her hand baggage was too big and to prove her point that it wasn’t, she went to the test rack or whatever it is.
It would not go in at first so she began squashing it down, sitting on it, bashing it like mad and anything else she could think of to get it to fit. Eventually it was successfully squashed into the rack.
That was the easy part. She tried to retrieve it and found that it was well and truly stuck. Her friends joined in the attempted retrieval, but again to no avail. Several staff members then had to intervene and between the lot of them they eventually got the bag out. Surprisingly really, she was let on the plane with the offending bag.
On the plane she justified her obstinacy to her friends, quite proud of it in fact.