Wednesday - Early start back down to London
BA1321 - Newcastle to London Heathrow T5 - 20 Aug 2014
Airbus 320 G-EUUF
1 Captain (flying), 1 First Officer, 2 Pursers and 2 other cabin crew. SCCM: Purser.
Scheduled departure 06:05 BST
Actual departure: 05:59 - push back
Scheduled arrival: 07:20 BST
Actual arrival: 07:11 - doors open
Time needed to clear Fast Track security at NCL: 41 seconds.
Boredom alert: this is not going to be the most exciting diary day!
I'm not exactly a fan of these early starts, but at least the roads are even emptier than normal at this hour. I only encounter a few timber trucks until I get within a mile or so of the airport. The main nuisance at dawn is deer, I've had a number of close calls but they just dart across the road. They can cause horrific accidents in my area. Today the animal kingdom is in bed, thankfully.
I arrive at Newcastle 05:10, and find both the BA and a Thomson air crew in front of me at Fast Track. An airport worker recognises me and sends me down a non congested channel and I'm in the lounge at 05:15. Though the flight isn't until 06:05, they will try to get away early if they can so I don't want to be any later than this really. I see one of my nearish neighbours in the lounge, as well as NCL's other CCR cardholder, who has been following this thread in lurker mode.
Quick update for now since I'm heading for a meeting: service was fine, staff friendly, well as friendly as you can get at that how in the morning. Arrived 9 minutes early, on the 07:27 HEX and in Paddington for 07:50, which isn't bad from rural Northumberland. to the bustle of the metropolis in 3 hours or so. Got another meeting in 9 minutes, I'll try and update a bit later today...
BA1336 - London Heathrow T5 to Newcastle - 20 Aug 2014
Airbus 319 G-EUOI
Captain, Senior First Officer, 2 pursers (again!) and 2 cabin crew.
Scheduled departure 18:30 BST
Actual departure: 18:34- push back
Scheduled arrival: 19:40 BST
Actual arrival: 19:43 - doors open
Time needed to clear Fast Track security at LHR T5 South: 4 minutes 58 seconds.
My meetings are over so I left Westminster at 16:00 hrs, walked to Charing Cross, tube to Paddington, HEX, and got to T5 South Security just before 17 hrs. No thanks to those stupid lifts that went HEX, Arrivals, HEX, Departures..... I'm in CCR within a few minutes. The scones have been censored.
However I know have to eat the scones before Ann tells me off again. Overheard in CCR (in the style of Overheard in Waitrose): CCR Staff Member: "I only work Tuesdays in August, you know. Otherwise it's my yoga classes, but obviously they don't run them in the school holidays so I may as well come in".
Incidentally yesterday in the South landside lifts I noticed the new Regus lounge being advertised. I didn't really want to check it out, but I will do so when I get a moment:
As you will see I've been row 1 all the way through this week, and it seems that continues tomorrow. Today, being a day trip, I only had 1 laptop, a notepad, MP3 player, a few credit cards (not the whole wallet), the CCR card of course, a ten quid note, which I don't actually use, a pen and car keys. Note no passport or other form of ID. And that all goes into a small rucksack which makes security checks fairly painless. I was going to take a jacket but the weather forecast was reasonable, so with only a short walk from the tube to the meeting venue there didn't seem much point in taking my jacket, though I did have shirt and tie on. So this means I had no problem today getting space in the overheads. There again I didn't have a problem with my normal hand luggage back (a Skypak London carry-on, which goes over the shoulder. I even managed to squeze it on to the CRJ 200. The Iberian A321 had their aircraft equipment in odd places (by BA standards) so there was an overhead bin forwards of row 1 on the port side.
Anyway we push off from A19 (again) with two different pursers (again), and all goes well to 27L until we hit a bit of congestion, so we don't get airborne until 18:53, nearly 20 minutes after leaving the gate. This isn't at all unusual during the evening time, aircraft seem to be queued back all over the joint. I listen to music via my Shure 535 headphones. It's been a somewhat frazzling day on FT, so when this track came on I had to smile:
The flight goes well, not much to report, and we arrive just a few minutes late.
Nightstop: home.