Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport transit
We exited through door 1L and I made my way rapidly to the new Qantas first class lounge. Fortunately I am a fast walker when I need to be, somewhat familiar with the layout of the airport and we had a gate far enough away from the lounge that I could pass most of the much slower first and business class passengers ahead of me.
Why was I rushing when I have a long transit? The reason is I desparately wanted a shower, and had heard (thanks to FT) the new lounge gets rather full due to the high number of first class and one world emerald passengers travelling through to London on British Airways and the similarly timed Qantas flight. The Qantas lounge closes once the onward flights are boarded so I didn't have a lot of time to wait for a shower to become free.
This was one factor in my decision to take the British Airways flight instead of the slightly later Qantas flight. Of course the police search on departure put paid to arriving first so I could have taken Qantas after all.
Amazingly I was one of the first couple of passengers to arrive from the BA flight and yes there was a shower free. Once refreshed I dropped my bags off in a corner of the lounge, which by now was standing room only (and indeed I saw several customers leave the lounge to wait in the public area of the terminal - it was that overcrowded). Next door I spied an empty and closed Cathay Pacific lounge (which I later found was also empty and closed for the transit in the other direction). Wouldn't it have made more sense to combine the lounges for something much bigger? Flights between the London Heathrow and Sydney hubs will always have a lot of premium and elite passengers on Qantas and British Airways, so the overcrowding can hardly be a surprise to the planners.
By good luck a computer terminal became free and I tried OLCI'ing again for tomorrow's return flight. Still no luck.
While the lounge was still open I cautiously approached the friendly lounge agents. Ideally I would not have taken up their time at what is undoubtedly their busiest time on shift (together with the transit of the 2 flights to Sydney). However, with the lounge closing and no opportunity to approach a BA check in or transfer desk agent (BA's transfer desk being open roughly the same hours as landside check in) I was in a pickle and so politely asked for a few minutes of their time. They attempted to check me in, but computer says no.
I gather all the info I could think of to help me decide what to do, and retreat to think some more.
I am getting ahead of myself. What is this problem? The side trip I had selected (more on this later) was necessarily purchased as a separate ticket. Due to the schedule of the return flight and available options for the side trip I had a shortish (about 90 minutes) connection at Bangkok on the way back. When I purchased the side trip I decided I likely had enough time to manage the misconnection risk due to the availability of OLCI on British Airways on flights from Bangkok. Now the OLCI wasn't working, I would have to hope the side trip returns back on time, uses a gate not at the far end of the terminal (and I thought it was likely the arrival gate would be in C concourse, about as far as possible from the G concourse used by BA), make like a banshee across the terminal, pray for no queues at transfer desk or at the lounge entrance, and check in in time before it closes for the flight. To add to my stress levels, I had been observing the on-time performance of the side trip flights for the past week or so, and found about every second day they ran 2 hours late! Further, the BA flight back to Sydney leaves after the QF one (so not possible to be protected on a later flight) and a misconnect would cause some problems at work (ie by not getting back in time).
Right about now I was seriously thinking of chucking in the side trip, but I decided to mull it over some more and come to a decision in the morning. So I asked for an information note to be added to my record, to indicate my arriving flight. While it would not provide protection for a serious misconnection, it might buy me a few minutes if my flight to Bangkok is on time or only slightly late.
That done, I grabbed a couple of drinks for fortification of my nerves, checked emails and asked for opinions of some friends about what they would do in my shoes. Eventually the 2 flights boarded and the lounge emptied. I was then asked to leave so they could shut up for the night, and so I headed into the public areas of the terminal.
More to come ...