All things come to those who wait in Terminal One

Stranded: The first time I witnessed a serious outbreak of violence at an English football ground, I was astonished by the speed of the mounted police who swept on to the pitch and took control of the situation.

They had had, of course, a good deal of practice in hooligan control over the years, and it was clear from the impressive way they handled the situation they had learned their lesson well.

A decade later, for rather similar reasons, the British Airport Authority displays a certain mastery when it comes to handling mayhem caused by security alerts in its facilities. At Heathrow airport yesterday morning, Terminal One was an example of highly organised chaos.

My day had, in fact, started in Glasgow, where I travelled early to the airport in anticipation of severe disruption. I had picked a poor day to take my first ever British Airways domestic flight to Heathrow.

Glasgow, though, was actually easier to negotiate than usual, with would-be passengers generally accepting the need to check even small bags, mobile phones and laptop computers. The flight took off on time and arrived early. My jacket had an overhead bin all to itself; by the time we landed, I was beginning to think I could get to like this new regime.

That was until I got to Heathrow. The arrivals board at 11am showed a few cancellations and huge numbers of flights delayed. The majority of passengers who had arrived in the previous hour were told they could find their bags in a corridor somewhere as the carousels could not cope.

In the departures area, queues snaked everywhere, criss-crossing each other and sometimes stretching for more than 100 metres. I asked one woman in a queue, neither end of which was visible from where we stood, what she was waiting for and it turned out to be a major airline's automated check-in machines. For a moment we both tiered off in the direction to which she was headed, then turned back to each other and simultaneously burst out laughing. Minutes later I become trapped in another queue as I tried to get from one side of the concourse to the other. A man came past with a megaphone calling on those intending to travel to Amsterdam to come forward and join him as the departure time was approaching. I was sorely tempted to join him.

In Glasgow, I was twice asked by heavily armed police to produce my travel documents. Here, I was repeatedly approached by staff offering assistance: trying, one suspects, to restore order to their tightly organised queues.

By evening, though, things had calmed down considerably. Travellers were still encountering significant delays while trying to check in and the terminal was still a good deal busier than would normally be the case, but with BA having worked its way through most of its backlog, it was at least possible to get around the place again.

An Aer Lingus staff member had said in the morning that they were trying to help people who arrived on earlier flights. When it finally came time for me to check in, I was optimistic that things would go to schedule. Just as I was about to head for the end of the queue, however, they announced they were encountering delays because of a breakdown in the baggage handling system. Some poor sod's laptop had probably become jammed in the machinery.

By the time you read this, my laptop may well have gone the same way. But to judge by the slowly moving queue for the check-in desk, I will get to Dublin after all.