I’ve made a separate entry for this, purely because it was such an unnecessary saga that I feel the need to describe it.
We left Orlando heading for London via Charlotte. I have to mention here the extraordinary incompetence of US Airways. I’ve never had to wait in a line with only 5 people in front of me for 2 hours before, only to be treated rudely at the end of a long and patient wait. Having paper tickets just seemed a bit too hard for the airline staff to deal with, as did actually serving any customers. Then the airport secutiry was the slowest and dumbest I've ever seen. Airlines in the US have a bad reputation, in my experience for a good reason. And US Airways were rubbish. So rubbish in fact that we ended up getting to Charlotte well over two hours later than we were supposed to (even accounting for the "official" delay) and only made our connection to London due to mechanical failure of another US Airways plane. And this flight then left late as well. Then, on the way to London, the screens didn’t work properly. No big deal, but kind of annoying. Then Tash’s seat broke, causing us to spill some water all over our stuff on the floor. Mentioning this to the flight attendant met with the response “Oh well”, as she walked off. She eventually stomped back and tossed some paper towels at us. Clearly first class couldn’t part with any towels and this particular lady couldn’t be bothered even pretending to be helpful. So US airways, great work all around. Not just incompetent, but lazy and rude as well. Bravo!
I should mention on the lighter side that we noticed the Americans have a rather cavalier attitude towards prescription drugs, as evidenced by the fact that a jolly bearded gentleman got on the plane and started offering people sleeping tablets. He then explained (after several people had already accepted) that he was a doctor so therefore it was okay. They were clearly effective ďż˝" one bloke was asleep even before the safety presentation was underway. But still, we found it funny, both that a doctor would hand out drugs like they were candy and secondly that people would take them without a second thought.
Anyway, we got to London Gatwick, got out of the airport and got to Wimbledon without any problems whatsoever once we were off the plane, so we have to be thankful for that at least...
