If you’ve been "surrounded by airport insanity" in Heathrow's Terminal 5 you’ll appreciate this.
They lost my bags, they lost my wife too… The Guardian reported last week that Terminal 5 is still losing 900 bags per day; travellers on connecting flights have a one in 12 chance of being separated from their luggage. Nice.
Can you beat Heathrow Terminal 5's baggage handlers at their own game?
Put your luggage loading skills to the test with Terminal Panic, an online game that's sweeping through cyberspace.
You control a character - who looks uncannily like Willie Walsh, BA's chief exec - and get challenged to pick up suitcases, take them through a metal detector and place them on a conveyor belt whilst avoiding a barrage of runaway trolleys.
It's not as easy as it sounds! Let us know how if you beat 3 bags in 1 minute (the current iloho PB).
The Air Canada co-pilot who suffered a breakdown yesterday on a flight from Toronto to Heathrow has got me thinking. What do you if someone with your life in their hands loses their marbles?
Said co-pilot flipped out and had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the cockpit whilst demanding to talk to God. At the same time the plane and its passengers were at 35,000 feet above the North Atlantic. Not ideal.
The co-pilot was shackled to a passenger seat, the crew declared a medical crisis, and the plane came in for an emergency landing in Ireland.
But what if it happened to you? What would you do if someone with their finger on your on / off switch went completely mad? At 35,000 feet above the cold North Atlantic I'd have to fight the urge to follow suit and lose my own grip on reality. But, are there any more positive and remedial steps to take in this kind of hellish situation?
Well, yes, as it happens there are. Admittedly, these techniques are a lot more useful if you're not on a plane with a crazed co-pilot, but oh well:
Grab the nearest sick bag. Put it over the subject in question’s mouth, encourage them to breath into it, taking slow breaths. Alternatively, cup your hands and put them over their nose and mouth.
Try and make the person melting down run on the spot, apparently it helps to calm anxiety.
Look through a wallet or coat to find a picture of a wife / child / dog / Mum. This is said to help anchor people back into reality.
Start moving their hands and fingers over a heavily textured object. This is also meant to be calming.
And, here's what Mind says about hearing voices:
Exactly what someone does will depend on what it is they are experiencing. Some images are so frightening that people freeze, scream or try to hide. The urge to escape may be so strong, that they may, literally, run, flattening anything in their path.
And here's what the charity says about how to cope with delusions:
It is important to recognise, understand and empathise with the distress, anxiety and feelings of isolation, to help reduce these feelings. It is not usually helpful to try and reason against someone's false beliefs, but neither is it helpful to pretend to agree with them. It is usually more helpful to acknowledge their reality for the person experiencing them, while saying that you yourself do not agree or share the experience.
Photo of Air Canada A319 C-GJWF by caribb, via Flickr (Creative Commons)
At long last journos have been granted a preview of the much-hyped Heathrow Terminal 5, British Airways' very own behemoth; it is the largest free standing building in Britain. Associated Press calls it "a gleaming, light and modern building with a five-storey-high wall of windows and a view of Windsor Castle." Bet the Queen is delighted about that.
The new terminal, which cost $8.4 billion, has 112 shops and restaurants and took seven years to build. Serving only BA's passengers, the first flight will leave from the spanking new terminal on 27 March. Hopefully by then they'll be some proper photographs of it.
BA passengers leaving from Heathrow can look forward to x-ray machines that don't require you to remove your shoes (I expect BAA security staff are cherishing that prospect too), high-tech check-in kiosks, flashy lounges (for first class and business passengers) and haute couture shopping.
Over 30 million passengers are expected to pass through the terminal every year, their bags dealt with at a rate of 12,000 per hour at 140 check-in desks. As The Daily Mirror points out, 68 million people travel through Heathrow every year at the moment. It was designed for 45 million passengers
The Guardian calls the terminal "an architectural and engineering tour de force that raises the standards of British airport design 100 percent." And The Daily Mirror says it's "an awe-inspiring temple to the twin gods of air travel and shopping."
With all this going for it I'm very tempted to fork any extra money required to fly BA from March onwards. Virgin, Cathay and ANZ (all competitors on the London – Hong Kong route I fly) leave from the disastrous Terminal 3. I'd pay double to avoid the horrors of the check-in and security areas there.
