NATIONAL EXPRESS BREAKDOWNS: #747 HEATHROW/GATWICK/BRIGHTON

         National EXPRESS BREAKDOWNS

Yesterday I posted from my mobile phone to Facebook while on a National Express coach enroute to Brighton from Heathrow that we were stuck in horrendous traffic for over two hours. In the end we were in this traffic for more like three and a half hours. A traffic jam of lorries, cars and two National Express coaches that snaked and snarled itself up in a mile long tailback through Heathrow’s neighbouring suburbs as vehicles attempted to access the M25 by means of detour.

We boarded the 8:20 NE coach service #747 at Terminal 1 in good mood after returning from abroad on a day that promised frustrating industrial union strikes across all sectors of the UK workforce and in our case BAA immigration officials. Our good mood was due to an early arrival in the breaking dawn ahead of the full flow of trans-oceanic wide bodies and intercontinental jets services that promised to disgorge their passengers into UK airport immigration arrival areas that were expected to be choked into their own brand of human traffic jams and stressed tailbacks as skeleton staff would try to process the UK entries of thousands of travellers. Hours earlier, on the TV In my Moscow hotel room, CNN assured me that I might be held up to 12 hours in Heathrow trying to get back into the country on that morning, November 30^th.

I was processed into the UK in less than two minutes. That assured the upbeat mood.

“Due to the closure of the M25 southbound,” our driver announced as we pulled out of Terminal 1 “we will have to negotiate a detour route onto our next destination of Gatwick North and then Gatwick South Terminal...”  We went on to pick up more passengers at Heathrow’s Terminals 2,3, 4 and BA’s new super Terminal 5, a trip that took the best part of the first hour due to Heathrow’s immense size. Our driver assured all the passengers that those making connection flights out of Gatwick would arrive in time to do so. As we slowly toured Feltham, Sunbury, Hersham, Weybridge, Shepperton, Staines, Chertsey, Esher, Walton-on-Thames and other twee expensive villages and exclusive, gated communities passengers began to speak to each other across aisles and over seat backs....”Where are we? Are we near Gatwick? Does the driver know where he’s going? We’re going to miss our flights!” One middle aged couple chirped up...”Bloody hell! We live around here! We’ve not gone anywhere. Look...that’s Sunbury Golf Club. We’re in the middle of nowhere. This isn’t a short-cut to the M25 or the M anything! The driver’s lost the plot!” Then the coach stopped for the umpteenth time in the single lane tailback (as it had been doing during its slow crawl for more than 2 hours), and the driver got up, walked down the aisle, entered the onboard toilet and had a pee. My travelling colleague, busy tracking our progress on her blackberry’s GPS looked up at me from across the aisle, her eyes widening and asked...”Peter...was that our driver?!” Outside, in front of us the traffic, including the other NE coach moved slowly on...we remained motionless. A pretty, young French girl who I’d leant my mobile to so that she could inquire about her flight departure to Marseilles, who had now missed the only flight that day that would carry her to a family funeral began to quietly sob.

Here is the thing...as we were pulling out of Terminal 5 the driver received a call from dispatch that the M25 was now part open and he could proceed now as normal. We all heard both sides of the radio exchange clearly. I turned in my seat to the already stressed French girl behind me and said, “There! You’ll be alright...you’ll make your flight!” She smiled. “Thank you. I didn’t understand what was being said...my English is so poor.” She apologised unnecessarily in very competent English.

The driver then turned the coach in the opposite direction of the motorway and began our 3 and ½ hour odyssey of prime southern UK property. Gorgeous homes, adorable mini-marinas with stunning waterside houses and moored boats...and of course Sunbury’s upmarket golf club.

When eventually we spilled out on the motorway from some elegant little village we were, after all the hours of agitation of winding and stop/start driving, still only 15 minutes outside of Heathrow!

It was too late. All the flights had gone. The French girl’s face was stained with tears. Behind the driver’s back passengers were moving from seat to seat settling into conversations of refunds and regrets. My colleague had gone up to the driver earlier on and asked about his choice of routes referring to her GPS that she was monitoring him on. She was told in a rather unprofessional tone that her system was “poor”, the coach’s was superior, that he’d been driving for years, that he had comprehensive knowledge of these routes and finally, that he’d been “following the signs anyway!”  

“Yeah?” She replied coolly...”So have we all.”

 When we arrived at Gatwick North the driver finally, for the first time since we boarded, used his PA to announce that he was “...sorry for the delay and that it was due to the closure of the M25.”

The M25 that we’d all heard clearly hours earlier, during his conversation with dispatch, that had been partly re-opened and he’d been instructed to use. Passengers bundled off the coach. Words were exchanged with the driver. Supervisors were summoned. Complaints were beginning to be recorded. The French girl followed everyone off the coach, visibly distressed believing now that she was the only passenger left to travel with him to Gatwick South to catch her now long-gone flight. “Please...” she pleaded with me, “don’t leave me here alone...I am frightened of the driver...I can’t understand what is going on...”

The few passengers left including my colleague, the French girl and I stayed on the coach as he now drove us onto Gatwick’s South Terminal. On arrival the French girl asked for my number so that if she had a problem explaining events to her airline I might speak to them for her and then she disappeared despondently into the Terminal. We were descended on by supervisors wanting our side of the story and when it was clear that second-by-second detail matched those of the passengers at Gatwick North, the driver was relieved of his coach, the onbound Brighton leg of the journey, his keys and his duties. We were told how to pursue compensation. We were offered a paid taxi on to Brighton if we wanted and told that National Express was so very sorry for our experience this morning. We were thanked for our direct reporting of events onboard the coach. Then we were told that erroneous news was now flying around the corporation that our coach was involved in an accident. It hadn’t. But someone definitely had a bad day-from-hell at the office.    

As the cancelled coach #747 pulled away I saw the driver, now relieved of his wheel, sitting passively in the passenger seat behind his earlier designated position staring at me and surrounded his NE supervisors wearing high-vis jackets. NE #747 was sequestered, he was suspended and I felt awful for him. He was probably nearing sixty and retraining him would probably be seen as pointless by his company I thought. What a way to start Christmas in his household. The poor chap.

We were told finally that the other coach that was caught in the traffic ahead of us that morning and departed before the call was put out that the highway was clear had arrived to its destinations and it was hours before us.  

When it turned left at some point you see, our coach turned right.

The only industrial action we saw that day was by an apologetic National Express. The only tears and delays we suffered were delivered late by the hands of one man. 

There had been no accident and the only breakdown experienced was by our unfortunate driver.