London Heathrow is still reeling from last week's foiled terrorist plot to blow up planes on trans-Atlantic flights, reports George Richards from London London Heathrow, Europe's largest airport and a massive regional hub, came to a standstill last week as a foiled terrorist plot threw a spanner in the works. The alleged plan was to use liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks to be mixed into a lethal cocktail mid-flight to America. Days after the suspected terrorists were arrested in a series of night-time raids across the United Kingdom, I arrived at London Heathrow from Cairo, before departing for Kazakhstan four days later. My first trip to red-alert Heathrow was plain sailing, perhaps because my expectations of a smooth journey were so low. The government's security measures -- after the initial knee-jerk ban on all air travel had been lifted -- had led to the cancellation of dozens of flights, in particular short-haul European trips operated by low-budget airlines. Angry at unprecedented losses, the airline companies are now threatening to sue the UK government for compensation on the grounds that the heightened security has been over- the-top. Although the flight restrictions have nearly all been lifted, severe hand luggage constraints and intensive body searching has delayed hundreds of passengers and forced numerous flights to depart half-empty. I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 2 at 23.15, the last arrival of the day. My Alitalia flight had stopped in Rome, and so the helpful check-in gentleman in Cairo had told me that absolutely no hand luggage was allowed. Disappointed about having to stow my iPod, book and all other in-flight entertainment in the hold, I nonetheless obliged. So I was understandably frustrated when a coach-load of Italian schoolchildren boarded the aeroplane at Rome, swinging rucksacks of chocolate bars, walkmans and Game Boys. At Cairo, I had been told that there was "a five-hour wait in London -- even worse because you're stopping in Italy", but to my delight I found that ours was the last flight and that our bags and persons were whisked through immigration. It was so quiet that I assumed there had been a second alert and that all other aeroplanes had been grounded. So when, four days later, I prepared to return to Europe's hub airport, I was relaxed and expected only a short delay at customs. Not so. Once I arrived in the foyer of Terminal 4 -- supposedly the least-affected terminal -- I could have been in a third-world bus station, for all the bodies sleeping on benches, some huddled in corners under Heathrow blankets, and the mountains of free water bottles and sandwich wrappers with which airport staff had tried to abate rising tension. Some check-in queues stretched so far across the foyer that they doubled back on themselves and left the departures hall to continue along the pavement in the light early morning drizzle. I located the self- check-in, handed in my suitcase at the drop-off point, and made for customs, armed with a transparent carrier bag of non-liquid hand luggage. The baggage X-ray machine was being loaded by two attendants, and one in three passengers were being body searched, not to mention anybody of a vaguely Middle Eastern appearance -- including an elderly woman in a wheelchair to my left -- who was taken aside for a body X-ray. I took half an hour to pass through, but apparently, this was light-speed when compared with the situation two hours later. Once through the departure lounge and onto the aeroplane, I would endure a three-hour delay on the tarmac, due to a mechanical fault, but this was an irritation destined for me alone and quite unrelated to the grander problems of Heathrow's new regime. The security measures cause delays and seem heavy-handed, but last week, days after the suspected terrorist plot was foiled, a 12-year-old runaway boy from Merseyside sneaked onto a Lisbon flight without a ticket or passport. According to some reports, he was only apprehended when he opened a bottled drink at a seat in the rear of the aeroplane. In the hands of someone else, instead of a fruit cocktail, it could easily have been something more deadly.
