We had booked tickets with BA for my wife and I to fly to Scotland with our 6 week old and 2 year old boys for a long weekend. Unfortunately for us terminal 5 had been open for less than a week and still had loads of problems with baggage going missing, cancelations and lots of delays. So you can understand that my wife and I were a little concerned. We packed as much as we could into the hand luggage and only took a small case of stuff to go in the hold.

Terminal 5 itself seemed to be ˝ finished and there were people still getting to grips with all of the new systems, one of which is for every passenger to be photographed when going through security. This took the guy about 15 mins to do the 4 of us, including the baby. Unfortunately he kept having to call over his supervisor to help him out as this his was his first time using the system.

As expected there was a lengthy delay on the flight going out, however there was some amusing banter from the pilot, who had obviously had enough of the fiasco as everybody else. When we landed his parting shot over the intercom was “Sorry for the hour and half delay, there was absolutely no good reason for it, please direct any complaints you have to " This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ” at this the whole plane erupted in laughter and everybody departed in good humour. To our surprise and delight even our luggage had also managed to travel with us and duly turned up on the conveyor belt.

We had a great 4 days away with the boys, long walks during the day, and a few whiskeys in the evenings, then came the trip home……..

We had an hour delay leaving the airport as the inbound flight was delayed from Heathrow. The flight itself went smoothly enough and as we touched down the pilot had managed claw back 15 mins from the earlier delay. However we were now stuck at T5 with nowhere for the plane to go, another ˝ an hour went by before we were finally able to leave the plane.

Now we enter the baggage hall, which looks like a suit case grave yard, they were packed up against the walls in trolleys. Stupidly I looked at one of the tags, and the flight was from the day before…….this was not looking good!!

We waited around 45 mins, repeatedly checking the board to see which belt the baggage was going to come up on. However it was still saying wait in baggage hall, when my eagle eyed wife spotted a suit case that looked like ours revolving around on one of the belts on the far side of the room. Lo and behold there is was, no wonder stuff was going missing they could not even get the info in the baggage hall correct. I’ve no idea how long it had been going around and around for, but we had it now and we set off to the car pleased as punch.

The luggage is in the kids are packed and we are ready to go………..turn the key…… and nothing, the car doesn’t even turn over. I checked we hadn’t left the lights on or anything like that, everything seems as it should be. By this point the kids are started to play up so I turned around in the seat to check on them and notice a dim orange glow emanating from the overhead light, and it suddenly dawns on me that the two year old had helpfully flicked the switch on the light on his way out of the car 4 days ago. Defiantly a flat battery then, so I leave my wife feeding the baby and head off to see if I can find someone with some jump leads, after speaking to some thoroughly unhelpful member of staff in the car park, I am informed I will have to phone the AA.

So an hour later a man in a yellow van turns up, we pop the bonnet hook up the battery and she fires up on the first attempt……at last we are on the home stretch.

We eventually got home 7 and a 1/2 hours after we set off, thoroughly stressed and promising each other that next time we will drive, as it will be definitely be quicker.

Jason from Woking