GrafShutka

Looks like BA has become SABENA (Such A Bloody Experience Never Again) and Ryanair for sardines in a tin seating.

On the 1st of December flew into T5 on Iberia from Madrid looking forward to the opportunity to do some shopping in the Terminal shops before flying on to IAD on BA217.

Disembarked directly into T5 at 10:00, with IAD flight scheduled to depart from the same Terminal at 11:15

What could possibly go wrong?

Followed the purple signs for “Flight connections” which, within 20 yards resulted us joining a mass scrum of people. After bluffing our way to “Fast Track” (we had Business Class tickets but no magical Fast Track red sticker) ended up in a vast queue which wasn’t moving. On our right were about a dozen BA customer Service Desks dealing with passengers, most of whom were in tears or very angry.

Looked over to the left to see the non-connections queues, which were not moving. The people checking passports were sitting idly, not doing anything. I tried to wave my passport to them, implying that maybe she could help out but her answer was a negative head roll and an arm pointing up and behind her.

As we stood and waited, every so often some passengers (in tears) were being escorted back to the customer service desks for rebooking.

Occasionally, a BA rep would walk down the queues asking about imminent connections. Most of those who waved their boarding passes at her would be told, “You have missed your connection, go to the Service desk for rebooking.” I asked her if there was a particular problem today, maybe a strike, causing the delays but her reply was “This is normal for Terminal 5”.

Finally managed to get passport and BP checked at 10:45 only to be stopped at the bottom of the escalator by a T5 person who said “You can’t go up due to the congestion upstairs”. Eventually we were allowed up the escalator to reach a very crowded Security Check "frisk" area.

A description of what happened there is another essay so I will just say that we escaped into the wonderful shopping area at 11:05 but had to start running to our departure gate. This involved two stops on the transfer train, an experience best described as "sardines in a tin", just needed some olive oil on our heads.

Emerged into the Gate area only to hear the PA system announcing our flight to IAD was closing! Managed to go through the passport and BP check at exactly 11:15 (they had obviously decided to delay the plane a few minutes due to the chaos in the Terminal).

We normally fly Star Alliance so this was the first inadvertent experience of Club World due to a rebooking onto OneWorld because our LH flight from MAD via FRA to IAD being cancelled that day.

Arrive at our seats on the main deck of an A380, which were in the “middle pair” in the centre section, facing backwards, one row apart. What a crazy design! Sitting backwards, one is just 50cm away from the passenger’s face in the aisle seat looking forward. Nobody wanted to swap seats to allow my wife and I to sit together or facing each other. Later found out that after paying 40 pounds for selecting their Business Class seats, they were naturally reluctant to give them up for us late arrivals.

During the flight, I raised the plastic barrier to avoid having to look directly at the face of the aisle passenger but occasionally the barrier just dropped down on its own. Additionally, whenever the flight steward came by for meals and drinks service, he pressed a button and dropped the barrier, as there is no other way to provide meal or drink service.

Trying to get out of the seat is an exercise for a contortionist of Houdini’s calibre as it involves stowing the tray table, securing the TV screen, then snaking through a narrow passage to climb over the foot rest of the next front facing aisle passenger.

Who on earth designed these seats? Maybe it was one of Michael O’Leary’s discarded plans to pack in his Ryanair passengers as tight as possible. But these seats are deployed by BA for Business Class passengers!

To cut a long story short, with the T5 connections mess which, based on all the comments in this Forum are not going to be solved anytime soon, and the extremely poor seating arrangements, BA is an experience we will never voluntarily subject ourselves to again, ergo SABENA.

HighLife

I feel for you.

Having been caught up in this disastrous transfer scenario at T5 myself before on mornings where you have to wait for two C/B shuttle trains, there are so many passengers wanting to squeeze on, before entering the hell of flight connections, I empathise completely.

I have missed onwards connections which were perfectly legal due to this total mess.

T5 is a total disaster. Every time I go through I am shocked by the queues everywhere, the crowded lounges and the masses of people squeezing through the limited space at the lower level between the north gates and the south gates at either end and the shops at either side. The escalators coming down right in the middle of that passageway don't help either.

Don't even get me started on flight connections, where having fast track status is at least (sometimes) a blessing.

I don't know who did the math on forward passenger numbers in the years after the 2008 opening T5, but they should be held to account.

And yes, never sat in those seats on the A380 in CW (I always choose windows) but the divider screen etc. is beyond awful.

kanderson1965

Sounds like situation normal at T5, afer a while you cease to notice it. It sounds like a case of security measures being set to max, for some reason us Brits seem to attract the attention of the less desireable elements in the world.

As to the subject of CW seating that is a case of YMMV as some of us prefer it to other business class seats.

Anyhow, happy flying with whoever you chose to fly with next.

Can I help you

Aren't you used to rear facing seats, United which is a member of your preferred alliance has them also?
I agree with you about T5 but BA has little control over this.

V10

Firstly, let me congratulate the OP on being possibly the first person ever to have looked forward to shopping at T5. At least you went into this with your eyes open

T5 appears to be a fiasco at present but BA doesn't have much control over Official Meddling (tm) and an airport operator that would rather be running a shopping centre.

You seem to have reached the right conclusion in wishing to avoid repeating the experience in future.

One final point, if you thought business class was bad, at least you weren't travelling in economy.

TPJ

UA has a different config (R - rear facing, F -forward facing):

BA (on 777):

R-F-F-R-R-F-F-R

US (on 777)

alternately: F-F-R-R-R-R-F-F in the first row and R-R-F-F-F-F-R-R in the following

As the result you do not look directly at the face of your neighbor, which is what the OP is complaining about.

Can I help you

Yes that's true.

vibguy

Kind of normal experience these days. SABENA has never been that bad though. Their successor Brussels Airlines has an economy class seating superior to the new shorthaul BA CE seating!
LHR and BA are going downhill at a very fast pace but still most people on this forum will still vote BA the best airline in the world and LHR the best airport in the world! I think it is a British mindset, they are simply the best whatever.

V10

That's going a bit far. You'll not find a majority of people rejecting all criticism of BA or LHR on this forum (as the posts will attest).

As we've discussed previously, you're taking one parameter - seat pitch - and using this as a sole differentiator. One this alone Ryanair offers a superior proposition to BA these days but I'm not at all convinced that this automatically makes them a better choice when other things are considered.

For what it's worth, I use BA, Brussels Airlines and Eurostar interchangeably for my travel needs, depending on what works for my schedule and makes most financial sense. I don't see that changing as none of them are doing anything well enough to make them a better proposition over the others.

PantsFlyer

Starting to worry about an flight connection I have through T5
My journeys always start from LHR, but I have an ex-eu flight coming up.

Arriving from DUB then onto SAN, all on BA

I have plenty of time, but I will be travelling with my 2 year old son so I'm trying to keep stress to a minimum.

Would it be easier just to exit through passport control to land side, then go through security again, thus bypassing flight connections completely?

layz

Never wait for a train when you can easily walk.

T8191

Never [yet] had to suffer Connections at T5, but the rest of the stories upthread are very familiar.

I seem to remember being given a bit of a hard time here for criticising T5. I still maintain it's a failure, partly through design and partly through staff/management. It is a totally disconnected bunch of organisations [including the damned shops] doing their own thing without any recognition of the fact that the passengers are actually there to get through their dysfunctional mazes and catch their flights. I hate T5 with a passion.

As for CW seating ... well, it's better than W or Y, but now even worse with the A380 which has no 'sweet spots'. I guess we have become used to the 747 Upper Deck.

Oaxaca

Quite interesting to hear the views of a fresh pair of eyes on BA's seating. You have my sympathy on the T5 connections situation, I'm lucky that I rarely use it, but it obviously needs improvement.

Many of the passengers in aisle/window seats would not have paid for them, BAEC members with status can reserve seats free of charge in advance, and guess which ones they choose..? Your best chance would have been one of the people in the middle seats next to one of you agreeing to swap, clearly you weren't lucky. Those seats are not ideal for people who don't know each other.

Experienced BA pax put those dividing screens up pretty much immediately (they only have to be down for the safety briefing), nobody is offended.

As I say, interesting to hear a fresh point of view. Those who fly BA a lot, and especially those who have good status, can avoid some of the issues you encountered (but not T5), so I suppose we don't notice so much. I fly a lot of other airlines too and while BA's inflight product has fallen a bit behind the very best, they do still have quite a lot of positives, but I guess you won't be taking the chance again.

lhrsfo

Personally, I think T5 is the worst terminal at LHR - even worse than T3, because of over-crowding and the terrible design features which seem to be there only to obstruct people passing through it.

I now use T2 mostly and find it much better, but also suffering from the bad design features and HAL going cheap on massively long walks rather than the tram. But they've avoided some of the really bad bits of T5 - the pinch points at the ends of escalators, the sense of claustrophobia when everyone is forced into narrow corridors between arcade-style shops - it's all very Skegness.

Andy33

There is no passport control arriving from DUB, either if you go through to landside or take the Flight Connections route. So it's really a decision on whether the security queue is shorter in Flight Connections or landside where you can at least choose North or South Security but have the extra time cost of walking through arrivals and changing levels to get to the check-in area.