Passenger was ‘swimming in Covid soup’ in airport queue
IT’S a sight even in pre-pandemic times which would cause most travellers’ hearts to sink.
Because the last thing anyone wants after a long journey home is to face an equally lengthy wait in line at the airport after landing.
But now, more than 12 months after coronavirus changed the way we live, the idea of queuing for more than four hours with hundreds of others in cramped, stuffy conditions seems almost unbearable.
However, that was the sight which greeted Stuart Rideout, from the Vale of Glamorgan, when he arrived at Heathrow this week – a scene he described as like “swimming in Covid soup”.
“There were only 20 people on our plane back from Germany, so I thought I’d breeze straight through to the car park,” said the 52-year-old filmmaker, who was behind M&S and Waitrose Christmas ad campaigns and 2016’s award-winning promo for the Climate Coalition, which starred Jeremy Irons.
“Plus there were hardly any planes on the tarmac when we landed. But when we finally got to UK border control in Terminal 2, I was like,
‘Oh my God’.”
For the next four hours Stuart found himself stuck in a long, snaking queue and surrounded by hundreds of others.
“People did start off trying to socially distance, but that soon fell apart,” he said.
“The queue just went back and forth, up and down, and soon there were bodies on all sides.
“It was really humid in there too, but – to be fair – airport staff were handing out bottles of water.
“Even then though there was that uneasy feeling of touching something someone else has just handed you.
“And if this is what it’s like while it’s still supposed to be essential travel only, God knows what’ll happen when everything’s opened back up again.”
Having been in Germany filming a tea commercial, Stuart said that he’d already had a PCR test and filled out the relevant passenger locator forms in order to travel – in addition to which he’d been tested daily while working on the project.
“It was really strict over there, but then you return here to stand in a room with hundreds of other people from all over the world and all of you are breathing the same air.
“OK, I assume they will have also all been tested to get on their respective flights, but there was still one guy that had to get taken out of the queue because he was showing symptoms. He was then led away to be isolated.”
Now also quarantining at home near Bridgend for 10 days as per government guidelines, Stuart added: “The whole experience felt like swimming in Covid soup.
“Had I not already been vaccinated I think I’d be really worried.”