I am now settling down in my room at Radisson Blu Edwardian Heathrow after a memorable flight on BA911, my first time on the big bird
. Having stepped off the ICE train from Cologne at FRA and being forced to take the shuttle bus to T2 it was a very big relief to leave the 36ºC heat and walk into the air-conditioned terminal. As I had made my way through passport control the departure gate popped up on the screens and I went to locate it, it being E2. Having done that I saw a stream of disembarking passengers coming from what appeared to be E2, so I decided to stay there for the moment. Sure enough, after a while flashware and jackowilkinson greeted me and we set off to the JAL lounge where we found eejp1007. Some nice chat, bubbly drinks and snacks later and I was off towards the gate again, wanting to maximise the time spent on the plane. Security was smooth, the pre-boarding bp check was not. Finally it was time to get onboard.
Greeted by very lovely cabin crew I was quickly directed to my seat in the rear cabin, 37K. Seat was very comfy, but legroom will be a problem when there is someone in the middle seat because the IFE box takes up more than half of the underseat space for the window seat... Unfortunately, the IFE was not on, so we couldn't watch the takeoff from the tail camera.
At 1909 CET we began pushback and we noticed while taxiing that there was quite a lot of airport staff taking pictures of us
. We lined up on RWY 25C and at 1928 we began our takeoff run. At the same time a Lufthansa plane was on final for RWY 25R, and they were probably so startled when they saw us that they messed up their landing, because they made a go-around and climbed out beside us. I hope some of them were able to get nice photos of us
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The flight was great, the crew was excellent and they were obviously in a good mood being given the opportunity to fly the big bird on this, the very first day of service. The approach was over the city of London with some excellent views, it almost felt like we were doing a victory lap above central London just for the fun of it
. The landing on RWY 27L at 1936 BST was hard, so it was no doubt that we were on the ground again. Finally, after almost all passengers had disembarked, the most interested ones, i.e. us FTers and some German teenagers, were treated to a cockpit visit and a chat with the flight crew. All in all a wonderful flight! Many thanks to all the crew for an excellent job today!