Wanderlust82

Hello, This is my first post here (loooooooooong time lurker). Mr. Wanderlust and I are booked in BA F out of JFK for our honeymoon next month.

I would like to maximize our experience (and hope this gets him on the miles and points path) and have the car picking us up from our hotel in Chelsea at 2:45p for our flight departing at 7:30 on a Monday night.

I have planned for us to go right to the Concorde Lounge and then the Galleries First lounge and begin celebrating with some wine. I hope to book a spa treatment ahead of time, but that isn't set in stone.

Will that give us enough time to enjoy the complete ground experience provided we are through security by 4:00p?

Airprox

Welcome to FT. Don't go to the Galleries First lounge, go to the Concorde Room and stay there, it is a much better lounge designed for F passengers. Galleries First is a lounge designed for frequent flyers who are not travelling in F, it is also totally over crowded at the moment due to the closure of the business class lounge for refurb. I'm not sure if the spa is still open at the moment because of the galleries club closure, someone else can advise on that.

rockflyertalk

UKtravelbear

Wanderlust82

Thanks!

Flight is 4/29.

We are heading down on the train the day before, so will spend quite a bit of time in NYC.

Do the 2:45 pickup and straight to the CCR? Should I push the pickup back a bit? I was hoping to avoid rush hour which I why I opted for a 2:45 pickup.

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk Wanderlust82 and welcome to the BA forum, it's good to see you here and I hope we will see more of you in the future.

I normally use the subway or train to get to JFK, but I would try not to leave that early. Getting to JFK for 16:00 hrs is fine on one level (the CCR isn't open much before then anyway) but the risk is you would get somewhat bored by 3 hours plus in the CCR. The CCR won't be on full cylinders at that point, some staff will be setting up the lounge rather than delivering service. Personally I'd leave it a bit later, I would suggest an hour or so later, and looking to have 2 hours in CCR, on the basis it's better to leave wanting more, rather than leaving having been bored by the experience. It also adds to the length of the your travel day and thus adding fatigue to the end of the trip. But if you want more than 3 hours in the CCR there is nothing to stop you from doing that.

abligh

I do this route frequently. My record worst evening trip from Chelsea to JFK was about 2 hours, albeit a bit later than you (so in rush hour), though it's normally a little over an hour. If you want to eat in the CCR, you'll want to arrive in JFK at least 2 hours before the flight time. If you want to spend more time there, I guess you'll need more. On no account go to the First Lounge rather than the CCR unless you want to observe and be smug about your CCR access (and if you want your other half on the points trail, this would be an instructive comparison as to why a CCR card is useful); as others have pointed out the First Lounge is particularly zoo-like at the moment due to refurbishment of Galleries. The CCR is positively tranquil in comparison.

Note that one of NYC's most famous Steakhouses (Peter Lugers) is en route from Chelsea to JFK. If you are on a later flight, you can eat there on the way to the airport (food in the CCR is not awful, but it's not great restaurant quality either). I suppose in this instance you could have a long lunch at Peter Lugers and go from there to JFK. Just a thought.

stewaran

I will be travelling back from JFK in 3 weeks time, Is there a separate dining area in GF for pax in CW?

hearingdouble

This x100. While the CCR is nice (as lounges go), I'd much rather spend my time in Manhattan.

Wanderlust82

Thanks everyone, I've rescheduled the pickup time to 3:15 pm. I know I can push it back more, but I'm a leave early just in case type.

We are going down the day before to bum around the city and NYC is only about an hour and half on the train from home, so we don't feel a big need to maximize time in NYC.

He works extremely hard, so I wouldn't be surprised if he just spent the NYC day sitting around. He already said he'd probably do that once we reached our first destination anyway.