Peter left yesterday to go on a business trip to Germany. This morning he called me from Frankfurt. After I got over my delight that the German cell phone I’d bought and loaded up with euro credits was still working, I found out, that, like everyone who’s flown British Airways this year, he had been hit with the curse of Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Although he’d managed to successfully board his flight from London to Frankfurt, and said flight had successfully taken off in time, and landed on schedule, his luggage had disappeared.
As a British frequent flyer would say it, “aoouh, Terminal 5….” Roughly translated from British into American this means, “During construction, the builders of Terminal 5 accidentally opened up a level of Hell through which all British Airways flights, passengers and luggage must now pass. Good luck!”
Terminal 5 is brand new, but it’s already internationally recognized for having heretofore-unknown levels of abruptly-cancelled flights and luggage disappearances. Even I knew about it enough to worry about the British Airways leg of Peter’s flight, but I told myself it was just going between London and Frankfurt.
Oh, well, supposedly British Airways will deliver Peter’s bags to him in Erlangen, as soon as they find them. That is, when the demons in the bowels of Terminal 5 get around to it, which I’m sure they’ll do promptly–just as soon as they’ve finished toying with the souls of stranded passengers, creating freaky weather, and poisoning the in-flight food.