Welcome to Heathrow Airport's best kept secret...
 

BAA's answer to complaints about being bussed to the gate/aircraft.

A brochure arrived in the post today. See http://heathrowbyinvitation.com/

Interesting, but at £1.5K per flight :eek: I can't see many people using it barring celbs or the ultra ultra wealthy! Even if it was 10% of the cost it wouldn't appeal to me....

Bargain:eek:

Interesting - rate is GBP 1500 but that is for a group of up to 6 people so that amounts to 250 pounds per person. Not that the target audience for this service probably care about 1500 pounds...

I would like to arrive by the aircraft by private car, though. Maybe I could get the driver to honk his horn as we approach, so everyone notices? :)

10% would be interesting I think but definitely with you on 1.5k, definitely a small market at that price

I've got an invite for this as well via WorldPoints. We have a 25,000 point balance at present - not sure what the cut-off point is!

By the way - before 30 June you get the return FREE when you book the outbound. And you get WorldPoints on the fee!

Easy. Book yourself a one-way Lufthansa First Class redemption on BMI miles. Somewhere in a low mileage zone, like Cairo or Tel Aviv.

The LH F service offers all this and more, even on reward flights. You get picked up from the steps of your London flight in Frankfurt (or Munich, which also offers it), driven to the First Class Lounge (one of the plushest in the world), put through a private passport and security channel and then driven to the steps of your onward flight.

It's very cool and worth doing once in your life, although I try to do it once per year :D.

Definitely not aimed at the FT patronage since the USP of this product is that nobody will actually know you are using it....

Hmmm. £1,500 for complete anonymity - unless, of course, there are any other punters in the special lounge, in which case it's £1,500 for the car-to-plane service.

It's a slightly odd thing, really. After all, if you are so famous that you are likely to be mobbed at Heathrow, then in all liklihood you will be pushed through the VIP channels 'for your own safety' anyway.

Even at this price point, there's probably a market for this.

In the brouchure. On the boarding page. Is the lady in the pic the VIP manager at heathrow.

So all they are trying to do is raise the money for their VIP section.

Imagine you are buying 4 F MFUs from CW at GBP 2,000 a pop. The total cost of your flights is GBP 8,000 and many people here on FT would consider that you are getting something of a bargain and would not blink an eye.

I am sure that for a significant minority of posters on this site GBP 3,000 (GBP 1,500 each way) is perfectly affordable, especially when using miles instead of cash for a large proportion of your air fare.

I took it that the £1,500 does not include VAT.

So if you buy a CW during the sale you could end up paying more getting to the plane than flying on it....

Everything has fallen into place. This has nothing at all to do with anonymity.

The more stressful BAA purposefully makes LHR, the more attractive the idea of this becomes for the small number that can just about afford it but wouldn't pay for it if LHR were more civilised.

It's just about logical for a relatively small number of genuinely vip pax who regularly travel longhaul (on shorthaul they might travel private) and for a smaller number who might stump it up for a special occaision. BAA's cunning plan is to make it even more attractive and even more profitable by making LHR an even nastier place to travel through.

That'll be Anita.

I would say that was done on purpose to give you the illusion of it being her. She wouldn't deal with plebs.

There is in fact a similar option at DOH for either arriving or departing passengers.

You get a special lounge and a car to to from the aircraft. I believe that it costs about GBP 500 per passenger each way. So GBP 2,000 for a family of 4.

This is in addition to the Premium Terminal.

So this is a more expensive version of Luthansa's First Class Terminal :rolleyes:

Singapore's JetQuay CIP (Commerically Important Terminal) can be yours from $S150 including buggy from plane to CIP (drinkies and ferocious air conditioning) - private immigration - collection of your luggage for you and stashing it into your waiting limmo which takes you into town to your suite. A pointless car ride from the plane rather than the buggy is more.

Ignore - misread!

If my Premium Bonds had come up this month I would have been very tempted ... on the understanding that I'm allowed to pause and wave at the A-10 bus ;)

It's hardly a secret - it was discussed less than one month ago here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ot-cip-t5.html

The Daily Mirror link even mentions the GBP1,500 per person charge.

Not something that I'm going to use but I can see the appeal. Now imagine what will happen when a bunch of more money than manners louts sign up for the service maybe for the ultimate start to a stag weekend, :eek: £250 each isn't that much. I know they can boot you out for conduct un becoming and all that but by then the disruption/damage is done.

Do we know where this is actually is I mean it's made out to sound like it's in the same building as Major Anita Newcourt's domain, but I suspect it is actually the 'suites'.

Sounds like someone at BAA worked out they might be able to make some money from these facilities during periods where there isn't any actual VIP's/Heads of state using it.

Me neither.

I would rather roll up on a double decker bus than use that service.

No, thank you.

I'll slum it in the business class lounge with the other J passengers and board with the rest of the folks occupying the J and F cabins. ;)

And if it's a family of 4 using those tickets, adding this service makes it GBP 2,350 each, which seems even more palatable.

Wonder if they're eyeing a larger scale deal with Amex Centurion or another high end concierge service in the near future (where BAA provides the space/security/immigration personnel and the partner bears all other costs of operating and marketing it)? Or else I could see them offering memberships, with unlimited annual usage that individuals or corporations could purchase. Might make it easier to tell your top execs "no more G V, you're flying commercial."

Hmm I'm not interested ... you get served light refreshments.. I'm normally hungry when i get to the lounge. :cool:

And JED (for F pax, I believe)

I wouldn't use this even if I had the £1.5k to spend on such trivialities.

I like walking past the plebs to the CCR ;)

Not that far to walk to the magic door is it ;). Or do you go the long way round?

Something for Diana Ross perhaps?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/newss...w-airport.html

I've seen Diana Ross in the old CCR at T4.

It was about 7:30pm - she was tucked away in the VIP broom closet (for those who remember it) in the CCR but emerged to have dinner at the dining area - complete with sunglasses on - a flashing sign to say I am a star. After her meal she retired back to the VIP broom closet.

SS agrent arrived with a buggy at the door of the CCR to escort her and her pitiful looking aide to the plane. I think it was only a couple of gates away from the CCR (the old gate 10 lounge).

This would definitely be her type of travel requirements if only to avoid postings like this.
Suspect Posh and Becks with kids would also use the same. However, does Posh prefer VS or AZ so T3 not T5?

Perhaps BA will start offering this service to a top sliver of GGL/CCR customers in future as an added benefit when flying F? A sort of outsourcing of a LH-style ground product for the select few.

Keep hope alive! :D

I recently had an email from Laufer (the chaps which run the service at TLV) offering me a similar (but not quite as exclusive) service at LHR.

I've emailed asking for more details and will post them here, but it costs (for a BA flight) USD $390 for up to four passengers and appears to be an escorted service with priority in certain queues.

So they say...

New thread
 

So can we have a "Celebs on HIT (Heathrow By Invitation) thread. High lovey index I am sure.

They should offer it as a complementary option atleast for those flying with full F paid tix or Prem (if we're talking T5). I wonder how many would chose that over CCR and chilling in terminal anyway? I suppose you could turn up 30min before your international flight, but if I was there any earlier I would almost certainly go for CCR. If you have say 4 execs flying on full-F tickets, the extra £1500 aint much, even though it is a bit ridiculous for what you get (especially if flight departs from A terminal!). And to be fair, if you are paying £40k+ for a group, you're starting to get in the relm of Private Jets which are far more private and efficient (not fuel of course!).

Went past the new fleet of BMW 7-Series outside the VIP entrance the other day. Looks like there are quite a few of them. They do look smart.

Personally while I really really like the car transfers (love LH/LX for that service) and the chilled out nature of the whole experience, I would get bored if it was just me there. I like seeing people wondering around going about their business. Just like I personally like space and quality in F cabins, I don't care about the "ultimate privacy" that some people seem obsessed by.

This might be useful to skip immagration queues when arriving.

I contacted them and they said that anyone using the suite could not use the BA lounge even if they were eligible, that's a shame!

Kind of expected that to be the case.

I don't really understand why you'd want to pay for this service and use the BA lounge... certainly wouldn't be a consideration for me.

You'd think she could afford a new jacket by now. The one in the photo, which was as much a giveaway as the hairdo, is the same one she's been wearing since, oh let me see... 1996!