The party plane overnights at OTP. It will be the 7pm departure from LHR the day before forming the morning departure from OTP.

My mistake, I was thinking of the crew. Would the BA 887 crew be on the Party Plane due to rotations?

Although I have done a number of ex-EU trips, today was the first time I have done a back-to-back.

I was on BA886 departing 11.40 from LHR. At around 10.50 gate A10 was called and my heart sank a little. It was rather fortuitous that I was actually standing near the gate at the time. A quick loo stop and I made my way down the escalators to find ‘boarding’ was already taking place. I joined the non-existent group one queue and waited whilst one of the two agents was tied up dealing with a passenger and the other just carried on boarding those in the group 4-5 queue. Was not impressed especially as he saw me waiting and never acknowledged that he should have let me through.

Anyway, they crammed us on to a bus and we trundled around to the plane. I positioned myself near the doors so as soon as they were open I was off and up the stairs before anybody could see what happened.

We pushed back a few minutes early and made good progress as we taxied to the runway, being wheels up about ten minutes after scheduled departure.

Flight over was fairly non-eventful. A quick chat and the CSM confirmed that the crew would be night stopping in OTP and coming back on the morning flight. They had come in from OSL on the same plane that morning. Although there are 19 in CE on this flight, she revealed there are 34 booked in for the flight to LHR tomorrow. For that reason we had an extra crew member who spent the flight sat in CE (this seat was showing as occupied on expert flyer so was clearly planned in advance) leaving the CSM and one clearly inexperienced member of crew to complete the service. I suppose this was a good opportunity for some on the job training. Three CC for 18 customers would have been overkill, but clearly needed when you have 34!

We landed at OTP at 16:35 so 25 minutes ahead of schedule and taxied to a remote stand with doors opening at 16:44

Annoyingly they were filling up two buses from both front and rear doors and The front door bus is the second one.

After loading the bus we took a fairly short drive to the terminal. By the time I arrived on the second bus the first had already spat out the hordes of ET passengers who were forcing their way into the building and up the escalators towards passport control. There are two sets of escalators/stairs to negotiate to passport control. Unfortunately, despite being first of, I was one of the last into passport control and the place was packed (I suspect another flight had also recently arrived) and I ended up in the slowest queue.

Faced with such adversary I did what any self respecting Brit would. I tutted and stood there. I explained I was transferring and my response was met with strange looks. Nether-less I was directed back down the stairs from where I came and I was into the security channel. I was the only one there and again the agent seemed confused.

By 17.02 I was back in the terminal and by 17.05 I was at the gate. Boarding (again by bus) took place at 17:10

They scan your passport. And they asked/checked that I had done that before letting me through the security channel. It’s a pain but think it cannot be avoided. With an empty passport control the whole process could be done in just a few minutes.