Galleries South
London Heathrow Airport
Galleries South Lounge
We arrived on time at Heathrow and proceeded to transfer security. If there was fast track security for transfers I apparently missed it. The queue only took about 20 minutes, but my gosh does no one have any idea of how to deal with a security line? I understand the rules change depending where you are but it’s really not that hard folks.
The security staff was taking personal offense every time they saw a liquid in a checked bag, at one point the women coming over to lecture about it when she should have been screening bags. Naturally, things were a little backed up. I didn’t tell her about the several bottles of water and soda that were abandoned in the lines, I’m surprised those dangerous liquids haven’t blown up without the protective properties of a clear plastic bag. Apparently, my wife’s handmade soap, being a solid, were not considered dangerous and didn’t require a secondary inspection.
We headed back to the BA Galleries South lounge. As a side note, I have always been the one that has considered travel a hobby and Mrs. AKDan still sometimes has trouble flying – to her credit, ascending/descending is hard because of ear issues so it can be painful some days. The funny thing is, she has adopted the searching for award space and often makes the final selection of flights when we are doing award booking. For this trip, I witnessed a laptop and an iPad being used at the same time finding business class availability and the correct routing to use our AS miles. You could practically see the smoke coming off the computer for all her searching.
We found a relatively quiet corner of the lounge where I put in quite a bit of work on this TR. We had about a four-hour layover with about another 30 minute delay due to inbound aircraft. The south lounge has many different seating and business areas. There is more relaxed seating interspersed with dining tables and high tables. There were two counters with computers, as well as printers and fax machines. In many areas power outlets were a bit hard to find though.
There were many beverage stations scattered throughout the lounge. There were bars with a variety of self-serve liquor, stations with bottled sparkling and still water as well as canned beverages, and coffee stations with Union coffee. Wi-Fi was ok, with my speedtest resulting in 2.54 Mbps down and 0.73 up. It was noticeably slow at times, and it did not reach the restrooms (don’t judge me, you know you all read your phone in there).