This is going to be a fairly detailed trip report, with most of the focus on our experience on our recent BA flights. It hopefully has some interesting elements (traveling in CW with kids and a baby, major IRROPS, etc.).
Overview, PHX airport, Club at PHX
PHX-LHR
Galleries Club south lounge
LHR-ZRH
Zurich, Switzerland and nearby
Pfänder, Austria
Augsburg and München, Germany
Firenze, Italy
Roma, Italy
FCO-LHR
LHR lounges
LHR-PHX and IRROPS
Overview
On our longhaul trips over the past few years, the wife and I have left our daughters, ages 9 and 6, at home. We welcomed a baby boy into the world this January, and decided that we would take the family this year, before our boy was old enough to be too mobile (e.g. before we are truly outnumbered). I don't see very many family trip reports on here, so I thought this one might be interesting.
I had a week of work near Zurich, and we have good friends in Southern Germany that we wanted to visit as well. We decided to then spend a couple of weeks in Italy to introduce our daughters to the art of Michaelangelo and Italian cuisine, to conclude our nearly 5 week holiday. With a family of 5, we avoided hotels and found nice apartments on AirBnB.
We found reasonably priced CW tickets on BA in April, about 75 days prior to departure. The tickets were not available at a lower price after this date, and by flying ex-EU, we saved about USD $2500 total compared to the same dates to and from LHR only. For those that are curious, an infant costs about 10% of the fare of an adult, whereas a child far was somewhere around 70-80% of the adult (both percentages include taxes and fees).
This trip report will focus mostly on the flights and journey, though I'll include one brief post about each of the areas we went to, and what it was like traveling with the kids.
This was our itinerary, traveling class and aircraft types:
24 June
BA0288 - PHX-LHR (CW 747 midJ, G-BNLV)
25 June
BA0718 - LHR-ZRH (CE A320, G-EUUK)
Apartment in Switzerland through 6 July
Drive to Germany
Stay with friends through 14 July
Drive to Firenze
Apartment in Firenze through 23 July
Train to Roma
Apartment in Roma through 26 July
26 July
BA0571 - FCO-LHR (CE A3xx, I think it was an ex-BMI plane)
26 (27, due to delay) July
BA0289 - LHR-PHX (CW 747, G-CIVN replaced with G-CIVT)
Seat selection and checkin
To be kind to our fellow passengers, we did not choose upper deck seats, and instead chose the last row of Club World in the middle, 20 DEFG. The wife, baby and I took the middle seats, with our daughters on either side. For the shorthaul flights, we chose row 1 to have a bit more space with the baby.
We had decided not to print our boarding passes at home, as BA's interface for traveling with a family does not make it efficient. You need to choose each person and print separately, far slower than flying solo. BA's system intentionally does not allow you to add advanced passenger information for infants, so you need to wait until check-in to add these details.
We were amused by BA's offer to allow us to check a total of 17 pieces of luggage, plus 10 carry-on bags. I'm sure some people do this, but unless you're moving, that would be a rather painful way to travel. Traveling with a baby and kids does add quite a bit to the luggage pile.
While we secretly hoped for an op-up to be able to use the F lounge at LHR, we were not surprised when this did not happen for either direction of the journey. Both longhaul flights were completely full in J and F, though very few seats were filled in F prior to check-in time.
We took the Execucar service to PHX, a 30 minute drive from our home. We arrived at PHX about 2.75 hours prior to departure. It takes a lot more time to get through everything in airports with 3 kids, so we tried to find a balance between having plenty of time, and not having bored children.
At the ticket counter, the agent was amazingly efficient printing out 20 boarding passes and luggage tags, and has us checked in to Zurich quickly. It sounds simple enough, but I've never seen an agent handle so many boarding passes and bag tags so quickly. I wish I had a video to share.
Security in the premium lane at PHX was fast. While we could not use PreCheck, when traveling with small children you do not have to opt-out of the body scanners.
The Club at PHX
The BA lounges in Phoenix have changed operations since my last flight, changing from Executive Club lounges to the Club at PHX. They retained the staff, so it had the same friendly feel, and the furniture is exactly the same. The main differences were the change in food selection, arguably for the worse (though this lounge has never been known for its food), and the distribution of cookies slightly before boarding time.
The staff were very friendly with our kids and the baby, and they were apologetic in preemptively letting us know we would need to use the Club lounge (as expected, we didn't ask or expect to use the F lounge with 3 kids). They asked if we wanted to be notified when it was time to pre-board, or to wait until after most passengers have boarded. We chose the former to give the kids more time to acclimate to the plane. PHX does have a nice setup normally, where they encourage staying in the lounge as long as possible so you can board much closer to departure time, after all of the economy passengers have boarded.
I did take a quick peak into the F lounge, and it is basically the same as it was previously.
Sitting in a small lounge with two kids and a baby definitely received a few glances of dread from fellow passengers. The kids and baby were well behaved, much to the surprise of those around us. Our kids asked why people were talking so loudly on their phones, when they were supposed to use their "library voices".
There was some minor confusion in the boarding area as they tried to direct us to the preboarding lane, while they boarded premium passengers first, but once that was resolved, we boarded and found our seats. I'm guessing they don't have many families of 5 traveling in Club World.
Up next: PHX-LHR