harlequine

I have tried numerous times but I have never felt comfortable in the CCR. Too pretentious and stuffy for me and the service is never warm. I typically just walk through to get the First lounge where it is so much warmer.

TheHak

never been a big fan of the CCR. If only it could be inspired by the fabulous Virgin t3 lounge

mattyb2233

I think the first lounge is great. Only one knock... The service is not the best. I hate having to order food. I wish it was just self service. (or there was a self service option)
Iv noticed that BA in my experience is not the cleanliest air line out there... It is really somewhat disappointing. Nothing worse then paying for F and finding crumbs in your seat.

HIDDY

BA F passengers are fortunate to have two top class lounges at T5....if you don't like the CCR then a short walk till take you inside the F lounge.
There's a lot of other airline F flyers who'd be overjoyed with that set up at their home hub.

TheHak

Yep I typically head there and never use the CCR card (except to go through after security) but it is still, in my opinion, far less good than the virgin one which is one of my favorite lounges ever visited. Its a question of faste I guess but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Land-of-Miles

I have been trying to persuade Mrs LoM to straddle one of the horses a la Lady Godiva for some years to no avail

harlequine

First Lounge in Heathrow is self serve but you can also order off menu.

at240

I agree that the VS LHR Clubhouse is a bit better than the CCR -- but really the CCR is a pretty nice lounge, and I certainly would be happy if I were forced to use it before all my long-haul flights...

Tobias-UK

Only if they are in First or are CCR Card holders.

ESpen36

The Galleries First a-la-carte menu is not as substantial as the CCR menu. I was at both lounges yesterday and compared them. The GF menu is the same throughout the day (breakfast on the lefthand side of the page; "rest of the day" on the right side and back), while the CCR menu itself gets swapped out around 12pm from breakfast to lunch/dinner offerings.


It doesn't matter, though, because the Galleries First buffet offerings are far more substantial in any event....hot offerings, cold offerings, fruit bar, yoghurt bar, etc. I really prefer the self-service approach because I can see everything in front of me and mix and match however I want. It would be awkward to have to explain to a Restaurant Associates staff person how to prepare the specific concoction of fruit and yoghurt that I like, but I can prepare it for myself in about 1 minute in the GF!

Land-of-Miles

I generally don't like buffet offerings in any shape or form as I am always somewhat suspicious that the food may have been poked about by others with dubious hygiene.

The service issues in the CCR also permeate the Flounge for any of the menu ordered items. It can be ridiculously hard to flag down a member of staff in the Flounge and even then the results can be unpredictable. If PAX prefer the Flounge because the service is so poor in the CCR there is something badly wrong.

The advantage of the CCR in my view is that you have options to summon serving staff without the desperate arm waving I often have to resort to in the Flounge. There are the call buttons in the Cabanas and Boardroom as previously mentioned. You have captive staff behind the bar who can be pressed to take orders, you have the dining room staff who I try to avoid as a generally surly bunch and I don't really like the layout of the dining room. Finally you have the option of flagging down passing lounge staff to help take your order and I find they are generally a more pleasant less frazzled bunch than their Flounge colleagues.

Where it all falls down is failing to have someone to direct the staff and keep them focussed on customers. I suspect the outsourced provider is not paying high rates and the service failures are a logical consequence. One solution would be to engage a manager/Maitre'D for every lounge and ensure the staff are directed towards customers who want to be served, to ensure the lounges are kept in good condition and to help the staff prioritise since they seem ill equipped to do so themselves.

I haven't tried the VS lounges for a long time but compared to other lounges the CCR and Flounge acquit themselves very well. Apart from the priority security and car to the plane (which BA could easily match) the thing which distinguishes the LH F lounges and FCT is mainly the service levels (which again BA could with a will easily match). The QF Flounges at MEL and SYD are also mainly better due to the quality of service and to an extent the much higher quality lounge fittings and layout.

I am pretty happy overall with the BA lounge offerings at LHR it just seems for a relatively small additional investment of effort and cash they could (to use a football analogy) be challenging for the Premiership title rather than being a solid mid table performer.

awm

I visited the VS T3 clubhouse for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago, just to try out the VS product LHR/JFK - not least because of the comparisons I've read here. I agree it's a nice lounge, but it has a completely different feel (for me) to the CCR or the F Lounge. I really liked the 'deli bar', I though that was a great touch, and the service was good, but there is relatively loud music everywhere and, subjectively at least, the wines are better in T5.

DFB_london

Maybe in the US. In Europe the BA set up is still second to the Lufi offering at FRA - to F pax, at least, though is, agreed, better for Golds.

However, as this is a much revisited issue (see multiple previous threads the OP has maybe never read).

As someone who's been through the London CCR three times in the last fortnight, with yet another to come this week, the point there is the F lounge does not excuse a nice lounge where a lot of effort has been spent making the hard product good. (Yep, its not the croydon meets rock n' roll mid life crisis middle management VS clubhouse, thankfully). The CCR is let down by (often) by disorganised and inconsistent service. (Even if the staff are willing, other threads have noted time and again the lack of direction or co-ordination).

For completeness, the wine is utterly inconsistent too, I find. At 6am it does n't matter, but it is symptomatic of bad hospitality management that seems not to not understand the targetted customer base, nonetheless. it is amusing to see how it changes: Some weeks a super choice of a 1er cru Alex Corton and/or other grand cru burgundy, a Barossa Shiraz, or a von hessen Reisling. Other weeks its some latam or euro-winelake plonk Tescos probably had on a 3 for 2 offer. Sometimes the F lounge wines are better than those served in the CCR. By a league. Figure that one out.

So, why does BA sponsor Taste London then shoot itself in the foot in the CCR? Whether other carriers have a two lounge choice or not is irrelevant: these failings should not be happening at what should be the 'show case' lounge in the network and for the brand.

As others have done, I too have given up on the CCR in the mornings too - and go to the F longe which has a better and BIGGER brekkie menu and being mostly self serve this is quicker. At this point, the only (London) benefit of the CCR card is to short cut the ghastly BAA bling-o-rama shops.

If the contract rebid is true. one hopes (like Lufi) BA goes for (1) retraining the staff (most of whom are good, positive, but just lost without floor direction) by a decent hotel and puts the resource and a manager in to run the operation; and, (2) a new caterer - Do&Co. seem to be the best out there, right now.

(By contrast the JFK CCR is perfect - even down to staff who have a fantastic memory for their regulars. Getting from check-in to CCR recognised and addressed by name - without the agent checking - at each touch point last week was impressive. More so as it happned three weeks before too.)

So the interesting point is that not only are BA destroying their brand value in the LHR CCR, but BA also 'promote' the CCR as a benefit at 5,000 teir points pa, but 1,500 gets you into the F lounge. So, this seems a weird way to treat F pax and the about 700 most frequent of the frequent flyers in the BAEC who hold CCR card status. (As a declared self interest there's two in our household account.)

SNA_Flyer

Glad I'm not the only one with this general feeling.

Hadn't been to the new CCR, only to T4. I remember that being a nice experience. Last March, was traveling with my parents (3 of us MFU J>F) and we stopped in before our flight to LAX. Sat there on the terrace 10 minutes with nobody coming by to take an order. Walked inside with my dad to the bar, asked for a couple of glasses of Champagne. Bar girl said that she would get them and bring them out to us. 10 minutes later, still nothing.

We had a short period of time before needing to hike out to the gate, so I walked my parents over to GF for what we needed. All of us were completely underwhelmed with the 'new' CCR.

BA seems to have a real problem on their hands with the lounge service provider given all of the reports here.

corporate-wage-slave

There's also a third CCR menu, which is for flights leaving after 20hrs. This is more esoteric and is unique to CCR. The "rest of the day" menu has many items shared with Flounge, plus a few extra items. Breakfast menus are also quite similar but again there are a few items only on the CCR menu.