Our departure gate is gate 3 again and it must have opened fairly early as the priority lane was empty when I arrived, it was straight through and onto the plane. A younger crew this morning, remarkably cheerful for the time of the day, no doubly assisted by the fact that it’s their only flight today.
This is the first of my trips to fall victim to last months schedule changes and instead of being on the now cancelled BA1327 at 10:05 I’m on the 06:05 BA1321.
This means two things, firstly I have lost the leggy luxury of row 1 and have been exiled into knee knocking row 6, and secondly that I will have roughly six hours at leisure in Heathrow T3.
I have access to at least ten lounges in T3 through a combination of cards, status, and lounge schemes. I’m not going to try to visit them all today as I have a couple of even longer transits coming up, but I think a first class lounge safari may be the order of the day along with a proper tour of T3. I have not really explored all of the terminal before, normally heading straight to lounge and then departure gate.
Everyone is aboard, the door is closed and we’re 7 minutes to scheduled departure.
Next stop, LHR T5 and the unmitigated joy that is the trip over to T3.