Zalmistinks

Getting on in years and not sure if memory are certain but I am looking through old travel photos and it seems that the LHR Terraces lounges of the early 2000's were distinctly better than the current Galleries offerings.

I started to recall nicer seating areas, slumber zone type with sleeper type seats, beautiful shower rooms and an actual spa including steam shower with Molton Brown products. Are my memories of all this accurate? Were the Terraces lounges better than today's Galleries? I am also recalling the previous LHR CCR and from what I remember the service was a much higher standard.

I am quite sure that the JFK CCR has only steadily improved over the years and for a couple year period a few years ago the F + B offerings were actually fairly poor while today they are great!

Saltire74

I was just thinking about the old domestic lounge next to Gate 5 at LHR T1 the other day and thought to myself that it always seemed nicer than what we have today. I especially liked the smoking room on the lower floor .

I am sure other will agree and other disagree, but I'm with you on this one.

The T1 Gate 5 lounge was probably my most used at LHR but vaguely recall the T4 lounge being quite nice too. Was only in the old BA T1 International lounge a handful of times.

Safe & Happy Travels

S

Zalmistinks

Exactly, to each their own, I am sure many also do prefer current offerings. Glad my memory isn't entirely faulty, I have similar recollections to the lounges you mention as well. I also don't recall people taking their shoes off or sprawling out over chairs

Safe travels!

HIDDY

Ah the good old days when it cost a fortune to travel in tourist class never mind a premium cabin with those old cradle seats. I would say air travellers were much easier to please back then than the spoilt bunch you get today.

That's why you might be imagining things were better when they actually weren't.

EuropeanPete

I distinctly remember the introduction of the Galleries concept in LHR T5 to be a huge improvement, but I also have some pleasant memories of hanging out on beach chairs under an umbrella in JFK Terraces with a glass of something bubbly.

With the possible exception of unreliable food, over-crowding and an occasional unpleasant smell, I do think Galleries are a bit step forward.

Zalmistinks

Nonsense, your completely wrong, premium and economy air travel is now more expensive than in the past two decades. Also, I recall that BA has had flat seats since seats the 90's.

francismc

I remember back in 1999 flying from Heathrow to San Francisco in Club and getting the old cradle seats.

Still was a very pleasant flight.


Ohh and first class having the choice of movie on small cassettes

Gshumway

I do remember some nicer showers, either in T1 or T4 before T5 opened. I went through T5 about 3 months after it opened and even then I didn't like the showers. The ones I remember were nicely tiled, had room to move around, the T5 ones are very cramped.

BrianDromey

I inherited my BA status from bmi, so have no recollection of those lounges, but I do remember my first visit to the T5 Galleries toilets and thinking there should be blue lights and needle disposal boxes.

Those nice showered were probably the T1 international showers, laterally the bmi showers at T1. Typically bmi they kept everything down to the signage, just put a bmi | A Star Alliance Memeber sticker over "British Airways". Well, if it was good enough for the planes, I suppose....Of course, until yesterday those showered were, once again, a BA shower.

KARFA

BA introduced the flat CW seat in May 1999 http://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/may/26/15

Hae you got some links to reports/articles comparing the cost of premium travel now to the past? Certainly it is difficult to make the comparison in terms of hard product since beyond 16 years ago you would not have got a flat bed anywhere, and also limited if any IFE.

ScruttonStreet

I was doing near weekly returns HKG-LON from 2000 - 2003 and I seem to recall that for much - if not most - of that time it was the CW cradle seats on that route. I think the first of the flat beds came in around 2002 on the HKG run. I think JFK was the first where you were guaranteed a flat bed.

The cost of flying my family of four (Two adults and two then babies) back in CW was around 40,000 HKD if you could get a cheap fare - so around Ł3.5k.

windowontheAside

I loved the Terraces concept. My experience of lounges prior to that was rather dull, masculine spaces designed for men in suits. I liked the colour, the furniture and the water feature.

Having longer chairs was great. I'm disappointed there's no napping spot in the Galleries product but presumably they don't actually want people sleeping in the lounge.

db7

HKG was one of the first routes to feature flat beds - BA ad for them featured the waterfront by the science museum - but only on one aircraft. The other(s) had cradle seats and were normally cheaper.

In those days getting a cheap fare was more hit and miss as not so much information was available on the internet and BA's fare structure had more oddities.


The old lounges always seemed to be less crowded, and in T1 and T4 there were separate executive club lounges for members and on domestics it was card holders(plus guest) only in the lounge. Food generally has improved. Remember before BA01 the food used to be very limited in the T4 CCR. T1 domestic was just sandwiches in the evening.

corporate-wage-slave

Ah the rose tinted spectacles!

Yes well the domestic T1 lounge was a great thing when I first started to use it, and the evidence of those chocolate covered flapjacks is still lies between me and the keyboard. I was a daily commuter for a few years and at the time I thought the Terrace lounges were great, and LGW had even better lounges!

But it was sometimes very hot in there, standing room only downstair, and often crowded upstairs too. Delays were endemic, making a poor quality travel experience, or so it seemed to me. Limited food, poor quality coffee, few powerpoints, very weak connectivity (reduced to using the Rabbit system installed over WH Smith for a few years).

To go from that to Flounge / CCR for the same NCL/EDI flights was a huge, overwhelming step up from my perspective. Hot food all day long, plenty of it, vast range of seats, decent coffee, lots more soft drinks, power points (I know we moan but T1 wasn't good), space, wifi and computers that vaguely work, the list goes on.

What people seem to forget is the massive influx of status passengers. In the old days I was typically the only status passenger to NCL, maybe another silver or Gold, that never happens now. EDI was always more status rich, but it's not unusual to have half the aircraft with status. The old lounges would never have coped with that.

The only big thing retrograde is the bathrooms, with the individual cabins rather than the more traditional mass use set-up in T1. I can see they wanted to improve the privacy but I don't think it worked, at least for the male gender.

LondonAndy

That's a very strong assertion without any statistics

I believe that, in real terms, long haul premium air travel is cheaper now than it was previously.

There is some evidence that airfares have fallen by 50% between 1978 and 2013.

There's another article suggesting that the fare LON - NYC has fallen from $6,300 in the 1950s to $1,100 today (in today's money).

Have you any evidence to the contrary