It is the possibility of late arrival of our flight from SEA that concerns me. Our last trip to Europe, in 2019, we were headed to BCN, with an ample 2-hour connect time. But our flight departed Seattle so late as to erode that time down to 35 minutes, and we had to get from T5 to T3 for the BCN flight.

Fortunately, there were quite a few pax needing to make the same connection—-16 in all—-so the flight attendants announced as we approached the gate that everyone else should stay seated and let the BCN pax deplane first. Then we were met at the bottom of the ramp and led to a dedicated bus that was waiting to take us to T3, where we were escorted to the front of the security line and on to the waiting plane, which departed almost on time.

That was not our first flight with BA, more like the 12th, but we were very impressed, and grateful. But we cannot expect that to happen every time our inbound flight is late.

If we miss our VCE flight due to late arrival at LHR, I know BA will put us on the next “available” flight, but that would be BA582, scheduled to 4 hours later at 17:10—but it hasn’t been flying every day—-looks like only Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for the last 2 weeks, according to Flight Aware. This transit will be on a Sunday, which is the day our flight BA594 seems to fly reliably. But it hasn’t been flying on M, T, W, or TH. So we could have a long wait til the next “available” flight to VCE.

This is the reason for my concern. I would estimate that over our 12-year history of flying BA, our Seattle flight has arrived late enough times that I try hard to avoid tight connections. This time I deemed it the best choice due to all the schedule changes and cancellations (such as BA 582 not flying on Sundays, even though it was originally on the schedule).

I see BA594 departed from A3 yesterday—might that be consistent?