Trip Reports - A reality check - Guatemala and Belize in Y class on BA, IB and AA from LHR

Having hopefully provided some entertainment and information in my recent RTW exploits, I thought I would write a report on my holiday travels in Guatemala and Belize. I will spare you a full-blown ´what I did on my holidays´ style report and focus on the air travel bits. However, if anyone would like more info on the in-between stuff, please drop me an email.

As I am not mega-rich, the flights are going to be in Y. I would have paid for at least premium economy but my other half was a bit poor when we booked the flights! Why not use my miles I hear you ask? Because I burnt most of them on an extravagant holiday in the South Pacific for next year.

The holiday was based around an overland trip starting in Guatemala, traveling round the country and on to Belize before flying home from Cancun. There being no direct links from the UK to Central America, I booked BA to Miami and back with connections from there on Iberia and AA. There will also be a couple of domestic flights to report on. Now to the report.

The holiday kicked off with a long day of traveling from home to Antigua Guatemala – around 5000 miles on 2 planes, 2 taxis and a train. The first taxi picked us up at home and whisked us to Paddington in a little over 10 minutes. I gave thanks again for choosing to live so close to the Heathrow Express – it ensures a 9.40 flight doesn’t mean a 4am start. A swift HEX journey saw us arrive in Terminal 3 2 hours ahead of departure – enough time to complete the last minute rush around the terminal for all the things we forgot to buy.

It is a little know fact that BA´s Miami flights use Terminal 3 – apparently this is to ensure they are aware of what the other airlines are doing there through the Terminal management committee. BA takes over part of bay D for the two flights and there was a truly huge queue of people snaking out of the Y class check in. Skipping all of that and joining the line of 1 person for the First check in reminded the other half why it is worth me spending 3 days going round in circles in the US – sometimes that pretty coloured card saves an hour standing in line.

The flight was closed for sale in both Y and WT + (BA´s premium economy) – we received BP´s with sequence number 268 and 269 and there must have been another 100 people in line. There were signs out offering voluntary bump compensation of either GBP250 cash of GBP400 in vouchers for a re-route on to one of the IAD flights on BA, connecting to MIA on AA. Not a bad offer, but with our connection not one I could take advantage of. Our bags were checked through to GUA (no priority tags sadly), but BA could not issue BP´s for the IB flight onwards from MIA. Clutching our documents we walked upstairs, expecting a huge security line. A pleasant surprise awaited – no more than a 5 minute wait with none of the take your shoes off nonsense.

I won’t bore you with the shopping antics, but we had enough time to pop in to the AA Flagship Lounge for a bite of breakfast before boarding. BA used to have dedicated F and J lounge in T 3 but they bit the bullet about 12 months ago. The FL is an acceptable substitute, but I find the English country house through the eyes of an American décor a bit disturbing. Cereals and yogurt were on offer to sate the stomach. I had to ask for a glass of Champagne (Piper Heidseck since you asked) –earning me a very judgmental look from the lounge attendant. As I was about to take my first flight in Y for 5 months, I figured I needed a little Dutch courage! It’s great being able to make comments like that here - the other half just tells me to grow up and stop behaving like a pretentious snob if she hears me say something like that.

Boarding was through Gate 32 – an area of barely controlled chaos with queues snaking everywhere. The PA announcements were difficult to understand – so everyone just pushed for the front. Picking our way through the crowd, we avoided being just avoided being selected for a secondary search. And then, one of those blissful travel moments – BP inserted into reader, a bleeping noise and it was spat out. Operational upgrade alert! I had wondered whether we would be lucky when I saw the load figures – for once my instinct was right.

BA207 7/11/03
09.40 LHR – MIA
747-400
Y class Seat 33G – upgraded to W class 18G.

We both were upgraded to World Traveller Plus – I got an aisle, the missus got 19E in the middle. A good start to the trip and my first experience in WT+ too! Also, a third reason why status is good – the missus was dead chuffed. Talking briefly to the crew we were totally full on board, largely due to a big contingent of cruise passengers.

BA uses the small Club cabin 747´s to MIA so WT+ is directly behind the staircase to the upper deck. The cabin only has 5 rows laid out 2-4-2 and there is also a lav on each aisle. Being just forward of the wing, the ambient noise level is much lower than further back.

Next instalment to follow shortly!

Looking forward to the rest. If you have time, I would love to hear anything you wish to share regarding the ground transport and lodging.

Boarding took an inordinate amount of time to complete. As a result we were about 40 minutes late leaving the gate – starting boarding 20 minutes before the flight is due to go being a good way of ensuring a late departure. Finally, we pushed back from the gate and ran through the usual sequence of safety briefings and other PA’s. Unusually, the captain was less than chatty – normally they seem to talk for hours on BA. No ATC delays for once and we were off.

Once airborne the IFE was switched on. BA has this highly frustrating habit of showing a half hours BBC news before the rest of the programming. This drives me up the wall as there is nothing else showing, and the news is out of date by the time it is shown. On the return leg it’s even more out of date, and on the SIN – LHR sector can be almost 3 days out of life. The other petty irritation is that there is rarely any announcement to say the main programming is starting – the CSD seems to expect you to guess. One bonus about WT+ - games are available including backgammon.

To start the in-flight service off, drinks are offered along with a little packet of flavoured breadstick – generally nicer than the crappy little packets of nuts served in Club. The usual bar selection is available ‘ a Bloody Mary went down well in the absence of any champagne. Unlike EuroTraveller, I don’t believe you have the option to purchase any bubbly either. Wine for the meal is also passed out at the same time – a great way of ensuring you have a drink with the your meal but a pain to look after for the 20 minutes before hand.

Shinkansen – please email if you want any specific information. I’ll post an overview
on here shortly.

Great report, Swanhunter !

Glad to see you are not being a wimp and enjoying a nourishing Bloody Mary/glass of bubbly. Looks like you took notice of the helpful pointers in your other report, you could almost put the "naughty" back in Naughty NW6. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JohnG:

Looks like you took notice of the helpful pointers in your other report, you could almost put the "naughty" back in Naughty NW6. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif</font>

John, I think you will find my new profile more appropriate!

Lunch was served about an hour after wheels up. BA have long since ceased giving out menus in Y – once upon a time you used to get a very neat menu combined with guide to your destination, folded up like a map. Very neat. Today, we had to deduce what we wanted from the classic airline offering of

‘Chicken or beef sir?’

Feeling terribly bold, I went for the chicken. This turned out to be Chicken Korma with pilau rice. Yum! I like curry in all shapes and forms and they seem to work remarkably well as airline food. This was no exception – tasty, hot and quite fresh. Better than a number of J class offerings I have had over the years. There was also a rather small salad, the usual rock-like roll and – drum roll please – profiteroles for dessert. They were the crowning glory of the meal – gooey, oozing cream and chocolate – and a Kit Kat! All in all, a pretty good meal washed down with just about drinkable Red Vin De Bordeaux. The meal is served on a funky transparent blue coloured tray, shaped to fit the different dishes. That’s fine, but where do you put your wine glass? A design fault here!

Coffee or tea was served and the trays cleared reasonably quickly afterwards. I settled back to watch the IFE and enjoyed plus seemingly endless games of backgammon. Two backgammon’s in a row was a personal best – mind you the computer is pretty dumb. The crew walked through every 20 minutes or so with water and OJ – WT+ seemed to get served more than the cheap seats. I was also very happy in my smug elitist way to see that the curtain between the cabins was kept firmly closed at all times!

An hour before arrival a light snack was served. A pack of 3 sandwiches (chicken salad, egg and cress and something gooey since you asked) along with a chocolate brownie and the usual bar selection. Not bad – enough to keep the hunger pangs at bay until MIA.

In spite of the late departure from LHR we were on time arriving at the Gate in A concourse. After waiting patiently for the Cub and First pax to file off the plane (the purser blocking the aisle apologised for making me wait….’But they are our premium pax sir’. Back in my box….!). The missus and I set off at a fine pace to avoid the build up of any queue at immigration. I was shocked to find no queue AT ALL in the hall – and seemingly enough INS agents to handle a full 747. BA to MIA has to be the way to avoid the hour’s wait that is typical at E concourse. Customs were disinterested in us both – so we were spat out within 10 minutes of getting off the plane. A Miami miracle!

We sauntered down to G concourse and the Iberia check in desk. The queues were much shorter than my last visit! The agent tried to shepherd me to the Y check in desk…until I waved my BA Gold in a very provocative manner and marched over to the queue less F desk. We were checked in fine for our connection to GUA – apart from one problem. According to the IB agent, our open jaw ticket home from CUN did not comply with the Guatemalan immigration requirement for a ticket home. I argued with him for around 15 minutes – politely of course. He finally decided that there was NO WAY I was getting on the plane without a return ticket from Guatemala. So, I had to pony up USD900 for two open dated one way Y class tickets from GUA back to MIA.

Clutching our invites to the Admirals Club we walked past an epic security queue for the lower E concourse. I had to haggle for 2 drinks vouchers each at reception. I am getting tired of AA’s tight arsed attitude to them when their elites have the full run of bars in BA, QF, CX, AY, IB, EI and LA lounges. I invested mine in 2 glasses of Samuel Adams. The Missus got stuck in to some Beck’s – how I love a woman who drinks beer. So much cheaper than spirits!

IB 6111 7/11/03
17.10 MIA – GUA
A319
Y class Seat 5D

Anticipating a grotty security queue at the remote E gates, we wandered down to the Maglex train with a little under an hour to go, admiring the buckets on the platform catching water dribbling through the ceiling from what looked like the men’s bathroom in the AC. Nice…

Security was ‘only’ a 20 minute wait, giving me 5 minutes to grab an espresso at Starbucks before we boarded. Amusingly, this flight shows up on Galileo as a 3-class plane – F, J and Y. On board it is a standard 2-class configuration with European style convertible seats, though checkmytrip.com shows Row 1 as First!

We had the first row of economy after the curtain giving a couple of extra inches legroom. This row (as per BA, AY) is still in the 2+3 business configuration giving a bit of extra elbow room too. The flight was about 75% full in Y and about 50% in J. The bulk of the pax seemed to have connected from either IB or BA.

We took off on time for the 2-hour flight to La Aurora Airport in Guatemala City. A snack was served in the Y cabin – it looked like a sandwich and some cake. I passed on the snack but was happy to get a full can of Diet Coke to drink. Very generous. Shortly after drinking that I dozed off and awoke when the seatbelt sign went on for the descent. Talking to the missus, I didn’t really miss much. A few shorts of the Candid Camera type were shown on the drop down LCD screens and the crew did another drink run. And that was it. In line with my other Iberia experiences, the crew seemed to be going through the motions and no more. I can’t see me putting any more revenue their way unless in an emergency.

We were on time at La Aurora – just ahead of an AA flight and behind one from UA. I love small airports and La Aurora is just that. A pleasant 2 minute stroll up the airbridge and along a corridor brough us to the immigration checkpoints. The queues were about 10 deep, but unlike the average US experience it only took around 5 minutes to process. We got a very pretty passport stamp with a Quetzal bird on it. Very smart.

Another thing to love about small airports is the speed of baggage reclaim. Within a minute of clearing immigration our bags were on the belt. There is no green channel per se; just a man collecting customs declarations who waved us through. 5 minutes later via an ATM pit stop we were in our taxi heading for Antigua! (A sound idea at USD 25 one-way)

I won’t write a long ‘what I did on my holidays’ report, but here are a few details for those interested. We spent one night at Antigua in the Posada de Merced, a standard mid range backpacker type hotel. A 3-hour bus journey took us to the Lago de Atitlan and the Volcano Lodge at Jaibalito. We took the family suite for USD32 – it was magnificent. I would thoroughly recommend this place to anyone visiting Guatemala. Great for chilling, looking at the scenery or hiking. The owner Terje also cooks up fantastic meals too for around USD7.

Back to Antigua for 3 nights at the surreal (and not recommended) Posada San Sebastian. We then set off at 4am for Tikal. A report for this section will follow shortly!

Great report so far Swanhunter (compliments returned!), what I really want to know is what you made of World Traveller on the way back. Did you get your money back on the fully flexible IB tickets?

You're lucky to have a partner who's starting to understand why you'd want to do crazy RTW trips. I'm still educating mine. And glad there's at least one other person on this board who knows what backpacker hostel means http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif .

Planning on including S America on a sabbatical next year, so would be interested in a brief summary of your highlights esp Guatemala - heard mixed things about this destination.