I once was scheduled to fly to London out of Dayton (to save money) through Atlanta. When I got to Dayton, I was told all the flights to ATL were cancelled. The agent got me on the flight from Cincy to London direct though, I just had about 60 miles to drive in about 60 minutes. I made it, barely, there was no one in line in Cincy at the Delta counter. I got on the plane and realized all my travel plans were based on arriving at Heathrow, and this plane was going to Gatwick No internet back then.
Last March, when the wife and I were headed to Italy/France for our elopement and honeymoon, we were originally supposed to leave from LAX on Wednesday morning, through Philly, then direct to Rome. We were supposed to arrive first thing in the morning Thursday and have all day there, and then Friday had reservations for the Vatican.
Well, this was when the big Nor'easter hit last spring, and lo and behold I find out on Tuesday that the Philly->Rome flight is cancelled. So I spend
hours on the phone with American, with a nice lady who is *trying* to be helpful but has her hands somewhat tied because we were flying on points instead of an actual revenue fare. Everything she's finding has us leaving on Friday or even Saturday, which basically means we have zero time to do anything in Rome before moving on to the Cinque Terre.
So I'm working every angle I can work, and she's looking up everything she can find. Eventually she says "hang on, let me check something with my manager." Comes back and says she's normally not supposed to do it, but if I was willing to not only change planes but change airports in London, she could make it work and I'd leave Wednesday evening. I say "sure".
So we fly direct from LAX to Heathrow, arriving about 9 AM. We have a 6 PM flight from Gatwick to Rome. I have coworkers in an office in Leatherhead right near Gatwick, so I'm trying to guilt them into hanging out and showing us around and maybe having pints [my treat], but given that it was going to be the middle of a work day, no luck. I start researching how to make use of those 9 hours and maybe see some of London instead. Figure it might work, although shlepping our bags around London all day didn't sound fun.
As it stands, we get in at 9 AM, we're just dead tired from the redeye flight, not feeling well from fatigue. Sightseeing wasn't an option. We eat crappy airport food in Heathrow, catch an Uber to Gatwick, only to realize it's about noon and they won't let you check in for a flight or past security until 3 PM. So we sit on terrible chairs in baggage claim, me reading my kindle with my legs up on my suitcase and her feeling like hell trying to sleep, until 3. Finally get through check-in, through security, and we're into the terminal. The sad, sad terminal. We manage to choke down some fish & chips and my wife looks at "mushy peas" with disgust [she doesn't like peas anyway] and a couple of pints, and finally get into Rome about 1 AM Friday morning. Crash and just barely wake up in enough time to get to the Vatican.
To this day, I'm not sure if my wife can remember the name of Gatwick. For now and forever more, it's just going to be "sad airport" in London lol!