Stuff of Nightmares

FINAL UPDATE: I'm home! I managed to switch my booking, and I got home on Wednesday on the first flight out! I have been lucky really, there are so many people who haven't reached where they want to be yet.
I am finally able to enjoy the snow, and it looks like it is going to be a white Christmas - the first one I have ever had!

UPDATE THE SECOND after five hours of me and my mum clicking and refreshing pages, I have managed to get a ticket on a flight on the 22nd. Let's just hope it isn't cancelled.


UPDATE - My flight from Las Vegas was cancelled, so I didn't set off. I have no idea if/when I will get home, I have been up since 4 trying to find information, the desk at the airport doesn't open until 2pm

Don't read this if you don't like hearing people moaning, but I need to recount my day in full somewhere to get it out of my system and this seems like a good place!

Today has been a nightmare - I woke up this morning ready to spend a leisurely day packing and sorting things out before my flight in the evening, only to find out shortly after that my flight had been cancelled, due to "adverse weather conditions" (i.e. a bit of snow and ice) at Heathrow.  The earliest I could rebook was for the 24th - meaning I'd get home on Christmas day in the afternoon. This was not happy news. 5 days does not sound like very much, but it is rather significant if you are only going somewhere for 2 weeks, and I had so much planned for the week before Christmas - meeting friends, going shopping in London, carol services etc. After weeping down the phone to my parents a few times, I packed hastily and went to the airport ($40 for a taxi each way) to try and talk to someone, where I stood in a line for two and a half hours, but after this, things started looking up!
Thanks to the (very friendly and helpful, despite being confronted with 3 jumbo jets' worth of passengers) BA staff, I have been put on an alternative route, so tomorrow I will be flying into Gatwick via Seattle and Las Vegas. The timings are a little tight, especially considering the only time I have had a plane journey with a transfer was when I was 11 and pretty much asleep, but I should make it home 16 hours after the start of my first flight, which is really very good.

The thing that I really marvel at though is how one of the busiest airports in the world can grind to a halt for 3 days after a snowfall - it is ridiculous! There are thousands of people stranded in places they don't want to be, all because Heathrow can't get their act together. They need to take a lesson from airports in places where it snows frequently, where they just get on with it, and the flights come and go with only minor delays.
Anyway, rant over. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!