christep

We left off in Part 2 with me having a very quick shower at the AA arrivals lounge at LHR. Now the next installment in Europe/ME:

It was a bad day at Heathrow today. Pretty well all of BA's long hauls out of T4 seemed to be badly delayed - apparently two 747s had to turn back with technical problems this morning with knock-on effects through the day which were compounded this evening by a "shortage of towing equipment" which meant that it was taking a long time to get planes from maintenance to the stand - the captain said that the problem was that it is necessary to cross two runways to do this and aircraft under tow take ages to do this, and LHR is so busy that there are very few gaps big enough.

So the 17:00 to CAI turned, at 16:30, into the 18:30 departure, which in turn became 19:45. This meant nearly 5 hours in the BA First Lounge in T4. This is not one of my favourite lounges. The fundamental problem whenever I am there is that it is always very noisy - maybe 30% of people talking loudly on mobile phones, large numbers of children who do not seem to be well-controlled, and hard acoustics that really don't help. Yes, there were two champagnes to choose from (one of which was the Laurent-Perrier served onboard in J) and 4 reds and 4 whites, a full bar of spirits & beers, sandwiches, salads to order, olives, nuts, etc. But fundamentally it is not a relaxing place. If I had known on arrival that the departure would be almost 3 hours delayed then I would probably have gone for a session at the Molton Brown spa.

Having said all that, at 16:00 I had taken a gamble on delays, and cancelled the room I had reserved at the Sheraton Heliopolis in Cairo. Hence, the longer the delay in LHR the better for me since staying in the T4 lounge would undoubtedly be better than my transit simply sitting around in Cairo airport. I need to be at the BA ticket counter to collect my next AONE3 ticket at 6am so the expected arrival time (as I sit in the plane waiting to depart) of 2am or a little later is actually a good thing.

Strangely the seat on the 747 (62K - the rearwards facing one with no-one to climb over) which I had pre-reserved and then been refused on check-in was empty, but no big deal for a 4 hour flight. The cabin crew were very picky about having everything loose stowed in the side lockers - even the menu card and my shoes! Dinner was served - I took a starter of smoked duck with an orange sauce, and a main of fusili with a tomato cheese and herb sauce; the pasta was a bit bland - there were green herbs on top but they were tasteless. Having over-indulged in the lounge I stuck to water and didn't try the cheese or dessert.

Then another 2.5 hour nap. I find the BA J sleeper seats to be rather claustrophobic, and, unlike AA First, they do not have any individual air vents which means they are quite stuffy. This was compounded by my neighbour having something of a smelly flatulence problem througout the flight. Again I woke at ToD, and again the very picky stowage of absolutely everything was required.

Arrival at Cairo was 2am and I took my time exiting immigration. I had been toying with trying to find a way of staying airside, getting BA to bring the ticket through to me, and avoiding the $15 visa fee. But there was no obvious transit route and it didn't seem worth the hassle. So I entered Egypt for my first visit. I then had about 3.5 hours to kill before the BA ticket office opened at 6am, and there is nothing much to do. However, the area in front of the office has plentiful seating, is well lit, has a couple of armed soldiers/police on duty all night and was a perfectly safe place to wait, read and have a doze. I had no hassle at all from people trying to sell me things (apart from a few taxi drivers just as I exited customs), which was a pleasant surprise - I had expected Cairo to be like, for example, Delhi, but it was much nicer in this respect.

The BA office opened promptly at 6am, and my ticket was ready and waiting for me. Because I had faxed through all the details of my credit card in advance they didn't even need to swipe it or even see it (they checked my identity against my passport). Everything was as requested so I had my new AONE3 ticket for about 15% less than I would have had to pay for a DONE3 if I had done my normal start in Paris. (The price was 27150 EGP including taxes, but billed to my card as 4534 USD (4220 USD excl taxes). I only wish I were still paid in GBP, not HKD, to make it even better.

My bags were X-rayed a couple of times enroute to the aircraft, and I set off one of the metal detectors, but the frisk which resulted was perfunctory to say the least - frankly I could have had a rocket launcher down my trousers! The immigration officer looked twice at entry and exit stamps within hours of each other, but decided not to say anything.

The first class lounge is the EAS lounge which is shared by a number of airlines including AF and KL. It offers coffee, juice and some pastries, plus large comfortable sofas. Unfortunately it also has a TV which is played at very high volume. At 6-30am it was showing some American-language children's show, which was bizarre since there was no-one under 30 in the lounge.

At the gate there was a token and totally useless hand "search" of most people's bags, but again not at a level which would have found anything I wanted to hide.

The BA First cabin looks nice - the seats have been reupholstered since I last flew them (which must have been two years ago) and they feel better padded than I remember. Unfortunately the headrest doesn't go high enough for me at 6'3".

The cabin was two short of full, and there was the usual complement of three FAs plus the CSD. All of whom were pretty friendly.

It is a shame that BA still has headphones that are much the same as you get in economy - noise cancellers (at least like the CX ones) are becoming de rigeur for leading First and Business cabins.

I also noticed that the number of tapes available for the personal player has been cut back from 50 to 25 (and there wasn't anything that particularly caught my eye). In the end I watched "Phone Booth" on the regular video channel. The audio selection is really quite poor compared with the CX audio on demand which is in J, never mind F. And the video screen is significantly smaller than CX NBC and (I think) a little smaller than the AA F one.

The BAg (toiletries kit) looks nice, but the contents are much the same as they were years ago.

Brunch consisted of some really quite nice smoked salmon, followed by a choice of "main course" from which I had the standard breakfast, although being from Egypt there wasn't any bacon. Not surprisingly BA can do a much better cup of tea than AA. Later in the flight the Purser talked me into a plate of cheese with some fruit. The cheese was nice, but the crackers were soggy.

And so, with nothing much else of note, back to Heathrow for the last sector before I really start my holiday: to Helsinki. I decided to take the FinnAir evening flight even though I could have got the BA one earlier, because I have never tried AY, and in any case my girlfriend doesn't arrive in Helsinki until very early tomorrow morning, so I might as well spend an afternoon in an LHR lounge with free internet, drinks/food rather than the evening in the Hotel Kamp where they aren't. (If I have anything much to say then I will do a separate trip report for the Hotel Kamp in the Starwood forum.)

The BA Arrivals Lounge in T4 is open until 16:00 so none of the problems that I had had in the AA lounge the previous day. The shower fittings are, however, beginning to show their age: the water pressure was poor, on the hot water especially, with a side effect that the light in the shower unit (which appears to be controlled by a water flow switch) kept going off.

I made the mistake of going over to Terminal One on the Airport Express, even though I had 3 hours before my flight. I had forgotten how much of a zoo the BA T1 lounge is, even on a Saturday afternoon. Moreover, unlike the lounges in T4 they don't have phones with free local calls. I therefore trekked back to T4 via the airside bus and still had time to get online for 90 mins in the T4 First Class lounge before leaving again to get the airside bus back to T1. I have never understood why at Heathrow there is no additional security check if you go from T1 to T4 airside, but if you go T4 to T1 then you have to go through an (invariably quite long) queue to be screened again. I had forgotten this and was quite alarmed when I arrived there with not that long to spare. Fortunately the queue was moving quickly and the gate for the FinnAir flight was quite close so I made it with a few minutes to spare. Departure was delayed a few minutes while they offloaded the bags of someone who didn't.

The FinnAir flight was an A321 with the usual European Business Class configuration of 2-3. It wasn't busy in J, with only 6 out of 25 seats occupied. The interior looked new, and the seats were very comfortable. The problem was the pitch, which I guess is about 32" - about the same as CX777 in Economy, and certainly less than AA MRTC seats. It is not sufficient, for example to be able to use a laptop without turning sideways to use tray for the middle "half seat". It seems to me that the only reason for paying the big premiums for European business class is flexibility on the ticket - the product itself doesn't seem to justify it (unless, of course, it comes bundled with a OWE or similar).

Bizarrely, a Simpsons cartoon with Finnish subtitles was shown on the drop down ceiling monitors, but with no means of hearing any sound. I'm not sure that would work for me, even if the subtitles were in English!

Dinner was preceded by an aperitif with pretzels, and was then served three courses together on a single tray. There was no choice as far as I was aware. There was a small "salad" of olives and artichoke, a main of reindeer and potatoes, and a dessert of a very small slice of chocolate cake with orange sauce. The quality was not at all bad, although the portions were much smaller than I had become used to in F & J on CX, AA & BA over the last 96 hours.

FinnAir has a problem with economy class passengers coming up the front to use the toilet, and although they have a curtain across between the cabins and a sign on the door which says "business class passengers only" they made no attempt to police it so there was a queue on occasions despite there being only 6 of us in business.

With an uneventful flight into HEL, that wraps up the third part of my mad mileage run trip report. 12 flights in 108 hours, covering 32660 miles on 4 airlines touching 6 countries with 7 different airline/class products (CX long-haul J, AA N America J, AA N America F, AA International F, BA long-haul J, BA long-haul F, AY European J). At the end of it I don't feel any more tired or jetlagged than if I had simply come across directly from HKG, although I know I will sleep very well tonight - by all reports the beds at the Hotel Kamp in Helsinki are excellent, so I am looking forward to that (and may post a report in the Starwood forum),

Now I have a two week holiday with my girlfriend (who is also the TA who makes all my personal travel reservations for me), at the end of which we will take CX F back to HKG. If I get the time I will do a final trip report on that for the latest post-SARS situation on CX, and also try to analyse what combination of OneWorld products would make the ideal First and Business class offers.

pallensf

Mahalo Christep...

Nice writing here...

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Patrick A. Inouye, LMT
volunteer trip reports moderator

PresRDC

Thanks for the report. I must admit, I'm getting the bug to do another RTW.

bedelman

Great report. I have many similar thoughts after BA F flights to DXB -- need better entertainment options and noise-cancelling headphones, etc.

As to free Internet in lounges: I recommend unplugging a PC (or a printer, in a pinch) and plugging its ethernet cable into the laptop you're travelling with. (You are travelling with a laptop, right?) Very easy, and allows use of offline mail readers (i.e. Outlook) which are so much more efficient than online readers (i.e.g Hotmail) and thereby ultimately keep more computers available for more lounge visitors.

christep

Yes, I am travelling with a laptop, but the probelm when I last tried that trick its that I was unable to establish an IP-VPN back to my corporate network. Yes, I could do FT and internet stuff, but not work stuff. Maybe it's changed, because that was a year or two ago.

Buster CT1K

Great report. Thanks a lot!

christep

A minor add-on to the trip report for the return flight HEL-LHR. We checked in about 80 mins before at the more or less empty check-in area. Bizarrely, the agent insisted she could not accept the OPEN dated HEL-LHR coupon in my DONE3 ticket unless it was stickered, so I had to go over to the AY ticket desk to have this done (I guess AY must have lots of people looking for unnecessary work - unfortunately, my TA girlfriend didn't have any stickers with her, otherwise she would have done it at the check-in desk ). This was the first time - in I guess more than 30 occasions - on which a check-in agent has declined an open-dated ticket on a OWE ticket. Even more strangely, although my ticket was clearly endorsed "Valid on OneWorld" and my reservation was on the AY flight number, the ticketing agent decided for some reason that the sticker had to be with the BA flight number (maybe it was my accent or something). Now in business class this doesn't matter (miles going on AA), but if it had been economy (M) class this could have made a big difference in the mileage earning depending on which FF scheme I wished to use.

Somewhere in this process my seat reservation disappeared, and then the check-in agent played difficult about getting two seats together, before finally admitting that the exit row was available. When we got on the flight we found that at least four other rows were similarly free, so I have no idea what game she was playing.

It became even more clear that AY is at the outer limits of OneWorld when we discussed with the check-in agent about lounge access. It took some debate and a phone call to determine that, as a OneWorld Emerald travelling on a OneWorld flight, I was indeed entitled to use the best available lounge with a guest. This is what FinnAir calls its "long haul business lounge" (AY has no first class). It is quite small, but has comfortable chairs which recline, and a small selection of salad, crudites & dip, breads, pastries, and all the usual drinks.

Boarding was painless, and the flight was less than half full in business. AY configures at least the first 15 rows with business class seats on the A321, with a movable partition. On the LHR-HEL only 6 rows were business, so the front seats in economy would have been 2-3 configuration also.

The A321s have external cameras, with the view put on the many small drop-down monitors for takeoff and landing (switching between a forward-looking and downward-looking view).

Dinner was much the same as on the LHR-HEL flight. The red wine was a very reasonable claret, reinforcing the view that AY does have a better cellar than average.

We arrived 20 mins early, and, unlike BA, AY does still prioritise J bags so ours was off quickly.